The initial core of Poblenou corresponds to the old neighborhood Taulat (word meaning "piece of farmland") and took the bottom of the nearest ocean current and former district town of Sant Martí Provençals. For many centuries it was an area of marshlands, lagoons surrounded by reeds, a landscape that still evoke the names of the streets of the Llacuna of Joncar.

The abundance of water, large tracts of its low price and favored, along the seventeenth century, the installation of the first meadows indianas. Then came the vapors, subsequently displaced by electricity, with industries of all kinds: oil, wine, textiles, metal, gas, machinery, mosaics, graphic arts, paints, plastics, food ... At the end of the nineteenth century, the territory was Poblenou more industrial concentration in the country, to the point that has been described as the "Manchester Catalan".