A Barcelona

The first three stanzas present the city protected by the mountain of Montjuïc, identified with Alcides (Hercules), the mythic founder of Barcino according to a legend that Verdaguer had already picked up on in The Atlàntida (1878).

Next are sixteen quatrains, in which the poet celebrates the demolition of the walls and the extension of the city (1859), with a prophecy of bursting growth, beyond the Collserola mountain range and the Besos and Llobregat rivers, as if "Paris of the Seine" had been transplanted to Catalonia.

However, the three following stanzas, in the name of the homeland, reject any awe of the French capital, affirming instead the personality of Barcelona, which had been the Catalan center of a medieval Mediterranean empire and «She shone on Spanish lands as eastern star».

The six final stanzas, written from the perspective of the Cathedral, imaginatively transfigured into King Jaume I, formulate the ideological conclusion, the providential perspective, in which Barcelona and Catalonia are exhorted to promote economic progress, based on their industries, but without ever renouncing the Catholic tradition, since in the end «God alone brings down or lifts up peoples».

This is confirmed by the fact that the Ajuntament (city council) published a popular edition of the poem, with a print run of 100,000 copies.