Fregona (mop with wringing bucket)
Fregona (mocho con cubo escurridor)
- Date
- 1956-1964 · confidence medium
- Place
- Zaragoza, Aragon, Spain
- Credited to
- Manuel Jalón Corominas
- Field
- Tools
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
A cleaning tool made up of a mop head of absorbent strips on a pole and a bucket with a wringer. The aeronautical engineer Manuel Jalón, an officer of the Spanish Air Force, began making it in 1956, inspired by the mops of US air bases, and in 1964 patented the plastic version with a conical wringer.
Mops with wringer buckets were already patented in the United States (Stewart, 1893) and in Spain from 1953 (Julia Montousse and Julia Rodríguez-Maribona, utility model no. 34,262). Spanish courts recognised Jalón's authorship of his 1957-1964 models. The location (Zaragoza, where he lived) is approximate.
What it led to
- wet household cleaning with a bucket and mop in Spain and Latin America
- the name “fregona” for the object
- patents for a bucket with roller wringer and pedal (USA, 1968)