Ibercaja Brand Guidelines: A Zaragoza Savings Bank From 1873 and Its Ebro-Valley C

A savings bank born inside an economic society.

Ibercaja began as a savings bank in Zaragoza, the capital of Aragón. Spanish Wikipedia’s article on Fundación Ibercaja says the idea was put in 1863 by Mariano Royo Urieta to the Real Sociedad Económica Aragonesa de Amigos del País. The savings bank was founded and approved by royal order on 28 January 1873, but did not open for business until 28 May 1876, working from the society’s own building. Both dates matter to the brand: 1873 is the founding approval, while the bank counts its anniversaries from 1876, which is why it marked 150 years in 2026.

The name grew with the territory. In 1933 the institution took the name Caja de Ahorros y Monte de Piedad de Zaragoza. In 1948, having opened offices across the three provinces of Aragón and in La Rioja, it became the Caja de Ahorros y Monte de Piedad de Zaragoza, Aragón y Rioja, Spanish Wikipedia says.

In 1988 the savings bank changed its corporate image and began trading under the shorter name Ibercaja, Spanish Wikipedia says. The symbol that came with it is still in use: in May 2025 El Español described Ibercaja’s classic logo, created in the 1980s, as combining the C of “cliente,” the customer, with the valley of the Ebro, the river that runs through Zaragoza, and a drop standing for people.

The new name went with growth outside Aragón. After opening branches in the provinces of Lleida, Tarragona and Barcelona, the savings bank absorbed Caja Rural de Catalunya in 1991, and from 2005 it set out to expand its branch network across Spain, according to Spanish Wikipedia.

From savings bank to a bank owned by foundations.

Ibercaja changed its legal form in 2011, as Spain’s savings banks moved their business into banks. On 26 July 2011 the savings bank’s assembly approved the creation of Ibercaja Banco and the transfer of its banking business to it, and on 1 October 2011 all its financial assets and liabilities passed to the new bank, which began operating that day. The savings bank kept all the shares, and the bank’s dividends were to fund its social work, Spanish Wikipedia says.

Consolidation followed. On 1 March 2012 Ibercaja announced a merger with Caja3, a group formed by Caja Inmaculada, Caja Círculo and Caja de Badajoz. In May 2012 a three-way merger that would also have included Liberbank was approved, but it was cancelled in October 2012 after a stress test by the consultancy Oliver Wyman set out the capital Liberbank would need. Ibercaja and Caja3 went ahead alone: on 25 July 2013 Ibercaja Banco acquired all of Caja3, leaving the founding savings bank with 87.8 percent and Caja3’s three savings banks with 12.2 percent, and the absorption of Caja3 was completed on 1 October 2014. Caja3 had received public support during the restructuring, in the form of contingent convertible bonds; Ibercaja repaid it ahead of schedule, finishing in 2017, Spanish Wikipedia says. The Ibercaja name was added to the former Caja3 branches, and years later all branches were unified under it.

The savings bank itself became a foundation. On 17 June 2014 its general assembly approved its conversion into the banking foundation Fundación Ibercaja, which keeps the cultural and social work and manages the stake in the bank. Spanish Wikipedia puts that stake at 88.04 percent at the end of 2025; the rest is held by three foundations descended from the Caja3 savings banks. El Español reported in May 2025 that, along with Kutxabank, Ibercaja is the only bank in Spain whose capital is held entirely by such foundations, and that the bank says all its profits return to society through the foundations’ dividends. In 2025 Ibercaja also ruled out a stock-market listing it had been preparing for several years, Spanish Wikipedia says.

The campaign language reaches the retail site. Ibercaja’s home page in November 2026 led with a mortgage offer under a line that plays on the slogan: “You want your home to be unique. We want your mortgage to be too.”

Savings banks, foundations and wordmarks.

Spanish and Portuguese banks tend to present themselves through a strong wordmark and a small set of colours, most often a blue, a red or a green. Many of today’s names are recent: BBVA settled on a single initialism for every market in 2019, and CaixaBank took its name in 2011, yet both carry much older histories, in the case of BBVA back to Banco de Bilbao in 1857.

Savings-bank and regional heritage runs deep in the sector. Several of the banks in this guide grew out of the cajas and caixas, the savings banks that served a city or a region, and mergers have often kept old local names on the branches of their home territory. Foundations formed from those savings banks remain shareholders in some of the banks and fund cultural, scientific and social work, such as the la Caixa Foundation and its CaixaForum centres.

On their own websites the banks give most space to everyday banking: current accounts, cards, mortgages, savings and the mobile apps that now carry much of the business, often with digital-only brands beside the main one. Branch fronts and head-office buildings in the banks’ home cities appear often in their photography, and sponsorship of football, basketball and other sports keeps their names in public view.

For the design-minded, the useful material sits in the banks’ corporate sections: brand pages, press releases about new logos, and the annual reports that every listed bank publishes. This guide reads those alongside independent dated sources; the palettes are our own unofficial interpretations, and no logo or mark is reproduced.

A 1980s symbol, refreshed for the 150th year.

Ibercaja refreshed its identity in two steps in 2025. On 8 May 2025 it launched a brand campaign under the line “Nos mueves tú” — roughly, “you are what moves us” — presenting itself, in the bank’s words, as a customer’s bank rather than a product bank or an app. El Español reported that the campaign brought a slightly changed logo, a closer and livelier graphic language and stronger reds and blues, while keeping the 1980s symbol.

The full rebrand followed in July 2025. Marketing Directo reported on 2 July that it was carried out by the branding consultancy BrandFor, with a renewed visual and verbal identity. The brand’s colours were expanded and updated around the pairing of blue and red; the logo was redrawn so that its wordmark comes from a corporate typeface developed exclusively for Ibercaja; photography was set to show everyday life in a natural, unstaged way; and a new illustration style was drawn from the Ibercaja symbol itself. The same report describes the tone of voice as warmer, simpler and more human.

The anniversary gave the identity its stage. On 10 September 2026 the bank held a gala for its 150 years at the Auditorio Princesa Leonor in Zaragoza, attended by more than 1,500 guests, eldiario.es reported, citing Europa Press. The name also reaches beyond branches. Real Zaragoza said in July 2025 that Ibercaja gives its name to Ibercaja Estadio, the modular stadium the football club uses for the 2025–26 and 2026–27 seasons, and to the planned new Romareda stadium.

For a design guide, Ibercaja shows how a regional savings-bank symbol from the 1980s can be kept and refined rather than replaced, with a custom typeface and illustration grown from the mark. Compare Kutxabank, the other Spanish bank owned wholly by savings-bank foundations, and Unicaja, another bank built on regional savings banks. For this guide we use an Ebro blue, a brick red and a pale mist with a rounded sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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