It is the year 1967. Aboard a plane, engineer Wolfgang Dierichs notices a woman sitting a few seats away. He sees her take a lipstick out of her bag. The researcher, who works in the adhesives division of the German multinational Henkel, observes as the passenger uncaps it, turns the base, and pushes the colored stick up until it is ready to be applied. He thinks the mechanism is very clean, fast, and precise, and, before landing, he is already turning over an idea: what if, instead of a lipstick, the tube contained glue?

A yellow bottle with a navy blue label. In the centre, you can see the silhouette of a very white rabbit making a great leap. This is one of the most famous packages that you can find among the cleaning products in Spanish supermarkets. It is Conejo bleach. Today it is sold under the brand name of the German multinational Henkel –owner of brands such as Dixan, Neutrex, Wipp or Loctite–, but the master formula was found by a Catalan: Salvador Casamitjana and Mensa. It was in 1889 in Sants. Back then, bleach already existed, but it had not yet burst into Spanish homes. "Modern bleach dates back to 1820, when the French pharmacist Labarraque tried to replace the potassium in potassium hypochlorite bleach with sodium," the company recalls today. "The formula has survived to this day," it insists.