First neighbourhood outside the city wall

Up to the Fifthteen Century, Barcelona did not have a port in accordance with its commercial magnitude. The coast was flat and the seabed was full of water currents that deposited sediments, forming islands and preventing ships from docking at Barcelona beach.

To protect all boats that arrived to the city, the Consell the Cent aproved, in 1474, the construction of an artificial dock, currently known as Port Vell. Little by little, this breakwater or pier, located at the beginning where today is Pla de Palau, will become a wall and all sediments that brought the corrents of the River Besòs and the Rec Comtal were deposited to create this small peninsula.

Before 1714, on this small peninsula reclaimed from the sea, there were already about 70 barracks and those that were not used as warehouses were slums. In 1718, the General Captain Marqués Castel Rodrigo, commissioned the construction of the beach district to the military engineer Prosper Verboom, to house the residents of Barcelona whose homes had been demolished during the siege of the city during the Succession War.  However, this new project would have to wait forty years to see the light of day.

In 1979, the General Captain Marques de la Mina finally gave the order to build the new neighbourhood on the land outside the city walls to control and regulate the population that had been established withouth any control in barracks, warehouses and  buildings with lack of sanitation. It will be the birth of the neighborhood.