"We are the Conguitos and we are very well dressed in chocolate with a peanut body." A cartoon of the iconic children's candy made up of two Conguitos, one on top of the other, turned into an exotic soldier from an unknown tribe, has been singing for decades one of the most famous jingle in the history of advertising. However, the popular sweet sees its name jeopardized after chocolate owners are branded racist.
Behind the Conguitos is Chocolates Lacasa, one of the most important chocolate companies in Spain and which is outside the norm that ensures that the third generation bankrupt companies. They have the fourth and fifth working. The company was born in 1852 from the hand of Antonio Lacasa, who turned a wool factory into a chocolate factory. The business was inherited by his son José, who stood out as a seasoned businessman. To start, it moved the headquarters from Jaca to Zaragoza to be in a more strategic point and with better connections on the Peninsula.
With the post-war period, there was a shortage of cocoa, so he decided to produce nougats and diversify the business, inherited by his two sons, Joaquín and José María. The first died in 1950 and the second died seven years later. The business ran out of directors, but Carmen Echeverría, José María's widow, decided to take over despite the fact that she had five children, still younger, to care for.
Carmen, a woman and mother, became the director of a company in Spain in the 1960s. She also trained her children so that they could inherit the factory, which until then focused on nougats. In the 1980s, it diversified the business of chocolate-covered nuts that the company exalted. In 1982 she launched the Lacasitos. The candy - a chocolate lentil covered in 150 layers of sugar and coloring and with a printed letter - was so successful that it opened a manufacturing line in the town of Utebo. Five years later they bought the Conguitos factory - a peanut covered in chocolate - and invested in a strong advertising campaign to make the sweet, which already existed under its name, more famous. Then they created the jingle that even today, four decades later, is still humming.
Carmen gave the witness to her five children: María Asunción, known as Marisún and president of the company, who died on May 28; José Carlos, Mariano -both directors-, Carmen and Fernando, general secretary. Currently, the family runs the business from Corporación Chocolates Lacasa, Corpocoa and Lacasa SL. From these companies, in which several members of the fifth generation have already entered, they manage assets of more than 133 million euros, sales of more than 140 and employ more than 500 people.
Million figures for a discreet family that does not like to appear. There are no photos of them in the agencies and the one published by LOC has been given by the house. Most of them reside in Zaragoza and meet every year to celebrate the Pilar festivities with a family meal by the patron saint of the city. The four living children of Doña Carmen Echeverría, who came to receive from Loyola de Palacio the Order of Agrarian Merit and Zaplana, the Gold Medal for Merit of Work, are married and have raised their own families.
If they have not taken a step forward throughout their history, they do not want to do so now that the controversy is raging against them on Twitter and Change.org. On the portal, they have registered a request to stop using the Conguitos brand as racist. In two weeks, they barely exceed 5,500 signatures.
Sources from Lacasa affirm to LOC that it is an absurd controversy and trust that time and silence will make them forget the fact. The discussion about whether to change the brand's logo is not on the table: "The Conguitos, as a product, are chocolate-covered peanuts. The mascot is two Conguitos, in such a way that the lower and larger piece represents the body and the upper and smaller, the head.As evident proof of this, the second best-selling variety of Conguitos on the market are the Conguitos of white chocolate, which as can be seen in the image below, are represented by a white mascot. that is, the external color simply symbolizes the color of the chocolate ", they affirm.
POLITICAL SUPPORT
The political group Vox has shown its public support for Conguitos against identity totalitarianism. Rocío Monasterio and Iván Espinosa de los Monteros have published photos on social networks with a bag of Conguitos.
The also deputy of the Ignacio Garriga formation - who is black - considers the attack on the brand absurd. "It is a supine idiocy, what underlies these movements is totalitarian progress, in no case is it a concern for racism, the objective is to subvert everything that represents the West and its values, and worst of all, they now have the support of large multinationals. They sell it as a revolution from below but it is false, it is a revolution from above. It is that revolution of moral capitalism that uses products, like the Conguitos, to tell us what we have to think. It is a revolution against meaning They are using blacks as they used women and workers years ago. It caused the class struggle, the struggle between women and now between blacks and whites, "he tells LOC.
The person in charge of the now questioned logo of the Conguitos was the illustrator from Zaragoza Juan Tudela, who devised it in 1961, when the first owner of the brand had already registered the name. In an interview with El Periódico de Aragón , he assured: "To draw the head I relied on the product. In Spain there were no African immigrants. We couldn't even see them on television, because we didn't have any." In addition, he assured that they were baptized as Conguitos because the independence of the Belgian Congo had been celebrated and that the country's president, Moshe Tshombe, visited the factory, he was amused by the name and ordered several packages to take them to his country.
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