La Caixa, also known as the "La Caixa" Foundation ( es, Fundación ”la Caixa”), is a not-for-profit
banking foundation based in Catalonia.
Originally a
savings bank (''caja''), it reorganized in the 2000s and 2010s: Its commercial assets are managed under its subsidiary
CriteriaCaixa
CaixaBank, S.A. (), formerly Criteria CaixaCorp, is a Spanish multinational financial services company. CaixaBank is based in Valencia, with operative offices in Madrid and Barcelona, Spain. It is Spain's third-largest lender by market value, ...
, which also has partial ownership of La Caixa's old banking business
CaixaBank; those are used to fund La Caixa's ' — social, cultural, scientific, and civic projects for the public good.
Its official home is in
Palma de Mallorca
Palma (; ; also known as ''Palma de Mallorca'', officially between 1983–88, 2006–08, and 2012–16) is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of the Balearic Islands in Spain. It is situated on the south coast of Mallorc ...
.
History
The foundation commonly dates itself to the 1990 creation of the ( es, Caja de Ahorros y Pensiones de Barcelona, ) as a merger of the founded in 1844 and commonly known as , founded in 1844, with the , founded in 1904
and commonly known as the "" and later "La Caixa".
Ancestry
Caja de Barcelona
At the time of the 1990 merger, the Caja de Barcelona was the third largest savings bank in Spain.
Caja de Pensiones
The ' ( en, Old Age Pension Society) was formed in 1904 in
Catalonia
Catalonia (; ca, Catalunya ; Aranese Occitan: ''Catalonha'' ; es, Cataluña ) is an autonomous community of Spain, designated as a '' nationality'' by its Statute of Autonomy.
Most of the territory (except the Val d'Aran) lies on the no ...
by Francesc Moragas, and opened to the public in 1905, expanding to the
Balearic Islands in 1915.
It merged with the ' in 1915, taking on the name "".
The ' was formally created in 1918 to oversee the Caja's social work.
By 1930, the Caja had been reformed 15 times by mergers with other organizations; the first outside of Catalonia was the ' in 1930.
In 1969, the ' became the first in Europe to begin real-time computerized tele-processing of transactions, allowing customers to do banking at any branch at will.
In the late 1980s, the ', by then known commonly known as "La Caixa", began work to expand outside of its usual territory: In 1986 it formed GrupCaixa to get around then-restrictive geographic limitations in the law; GrupCaixa was folded back into La Caixa in 1989 when the limitations were removed.
By the time of the 1990 merger, La Caixa was already the largest savings bank in Spain.
1990 organizati