[AlanInSitges]

As an aside to that aside, GEE was at least partly owned by the state back then.

The choice of color system was a pretty big deal politically because it allowed the main players, USA, Germany, France, a degree of influence over technical policy in the countries that chose their system. It was almost always a political choice rather than a technical one.

Spain had decided on SECAM as their color system in the mid 1960s after a few years of trialing PAL, SECAM and NTSC. Once the decision had been announced, nothing happened and the people were asking why there was none of this promised color on the single (state-controlled) channel that existed at the time.

After three years of non-action, the Ministry of Culture said oops our bad, we meant PAL. At the same time, but totally unrelated, the German government handed over 200 million Deutsch Marks to the Spanish government as a loan (wink wink). The French were livid. As a consolation prize, Spain "gave" GEE to Thomson. All the press I can find from the era just say things like "gave" or that they "received" GEE. It's not super clear if it was just a gift or they paid something for it. Anyway, French Thomson wound up with half-ish-Spanish GEE, who didn't make anything* and had been selling TV sets based on a Dutch design built in a factory in Barcelona, as the consolation prize after Spain chose a German color system. Europe!

And yeah, that logo is not at all surprising coming from GE and Spain.



*Evidently they made industrial motors for trains, and still do, but no consumer electronics, those were all farmed out to the lowest bidder.