Sant Martí
Sant Martí: from Poblenou's Catalan Manchester to Diagonal Mar towers and Besòs estates.
The former municipality of Sant Martí de Provençals hosted Barcelona's densest industrial concentration. Olympic village, 22@, Forum-era waterfront and unequal popular estates now share one district — a map of production, spectacle and periphery. The district groups 10 neighbourhoods with a combined registered population of about 252,625 (padró 2026). The comparative table uses the same definitions and years for every barri. Internal inequalities — income, density, tourism, self-built or Eixample histories — are best read neighbourhood by neighbourhood. Each has its own page with sources.
Plan of Barcelona and its surroundings around 1890, with the Eixample expanding.
Wikimedia Commons · public domain · source
Neighbourhood directory
| Neighbourhood | Population | Density | Income (section mean) |
|---|---|---|---|
| el Camp de l'Arpa del Clot | 39,535 | 533.5 | 24,664 |
| el Clot | 26,907 | 386 | 24,470 |
| el Parc i la Llacuna del Poblenou | 17,639 | 157.2 | 26,699 |
| la Vila Olímpica del Poblenou | 9,293 | 100.5 | 36,618 |
| el Poblenou | 34,736 | 221.7 | 27,093 |
| Diagonal Mar i el Front Marítim del Poblenou | 13,771 | 112.2 | 28,985 |
| el Besòs i el Maresme | 30,695 | 253.9 | 16,908 |
| Provençals del Poblenou | 22,076 | 203.3 | 23,093 |
| Sant Martí de Provençals | 27,035 | 368.3 | 21,756 |
| la Verneda i la Pau | 30,938 | 273.8 | 20,083 |
- el Camp de l'Arpa del Clot — El Camp de l’Arpa del Clot preserves a city that began to urbanise before the Cerdà plan reached it: bent routes, narrow passages, modest houses, reused factories and a hard edge against the Meridiana. Even its name needs correction: before the harp, there was probably a stone chest or marker.
- el Clot — El Clot is an old Sant Martí centre formed on low ground through water, routes, a market and industrial labour. It can still be read as a complete town: high street, square, housing, cooperative life, flour mill and a park made from railway workshops.
- el Parc i la Llacuna del Poblenou — El Parc i la Llacuna del Poblenou joins two names, several edges and one of Barcelona’s most intense urban transformations. Beneath campuses, offices, museums and towers lie drained wet ground, factories, workshops, workers’ housing and an unresolved struggle over who can keep living and working in 22@.
- la Vila Olímpica del Poblenou — The Olympic Village looks as though it appeared at once in 1992, but its ground contains an earlier city of factories, railways, working beaches and workers’ housing. Read it as three places at once: a planned Olympic district, an industrial landscape almost completely erased, and the everyday neighbourhood made after the athletes left.
- el Poblenou — Poblenou was market garden, wetland, workers’ district, “Catalan Manchester”, industrial beach and factory-reuse laboratory before it became a creative-city brand. Its value lies in the difficult coexistence of the Rambla, popular housing, factories, cemetery, workshops, artists, technology and neighbourhood life.
- Diagonal Mar i el Front Marítim del Poblenou — Diagonal Mar is where Avinguda Diagonal reaches the sea through a landscape remade with towers, a shopping centre, park, housing and beach. It looks finished, yet reveals an unfinished negotiation among industrial land, private development, public space, coastal ecology and residential life.
- el Besòs i el Maresme — El Besòs i el Maresme is mass housing, migration, industry, schools, association and metropolitan edge. Between the mid-century estates and the Fòrum lies a city built quickly, completed by residents and now entering a long, large-scale programme of physical repair.
- Provençals del Poblenou — Provençals del Poblenou is where Sant Martí’s old geography, the Pere IV road, large factory compounds and 22@ overlap most clearly. It is not an anonymous Poblenou extension: its productive scale, vacant land and conflicts are distinct.
- Sant Martí de Provençals — Sant Martí de Provençals preserves one of the Barcelona plain’s oldest centres inside a very dense residential district: church, farmhouses, paths and cultivated land. Its history is not a jump from rural world to blocks, but a succession of parish, municipality, industry, mass housing, park and cultural institutions.
- la Verneda i la Pau — La Verneda i la Pau is made from layers that remain physically distinct: fields and irrigation, factories, housing estates, cooperatives, rebuilt blocks and facilities won through collective action. Its two names join a wet landscape of trees to a Franco-era slogan that residents eventually reclaimed for themselves.