This book is a study of the early history of the Spanish cotton industry, in Barcelona. It covers two principal phases in the industry's development: a first, from approximately 1736 to 1783, which was characterized by a concentration above all on calico-printing and a second, from 1783 to 1832, during which there was a gradual expansion in spinning and weaving and a start was made to introducing the cotton machinery which had been invented in England. It is limited, thus, principally to the period generally defined as ‘pre-’ or ‘proto-’ industrial; indeed it ends in the year of the foundation of the city's first steam-powered factory, that of Bonaplata, Rull and Vilaregut.

The concentration on Barcelona is justified by the fact that the development of the national industry was largely confined to the city during these two first phases. It was only during the second phase, with the expansion firstly of manual spinning and then the progression to dependence on hydraulic and steam-power, that the extent of this predominance began to be reduced with significant diffusion of the industry to other parts of Catalonia.