The company provided a legal framework and a focus for capital which enabled Catalan merchants to break free from the restrictions of the Cadiz monopoly on trade with the Indies, provided skills and contacts that enabled the development of free trade between Catalonia and the Americas to flourish after the company's demise, and contributed to the development of the textile industry which later became the basis of industrialisation in Catalonia.

Tentatively by the late 17th century Catalan goods had reached the Indies via the Spanish coastal trade to Cádiz and this grew slowly until by the mid 1740s entire ships were beginning to be fitted out in Barcelona for transatlantic commerce.

[2] The Barcelona Company was one of a number of chartered companies established by the Spanish government in the 18th century as part of the Bourbon Reforms, with the intention of reforming Spain's commerce with the Americas,[3][4] integrating colonial economies at the peripheries of the Spanish Empire and reducing the activities of British, French and Dutch privateers and smugglers.

[7][2] The company exported principally wine and brandy and increasingly chintz (or printed calico Catalan: indianes) as this industry grew in Barcelona.

[2][9] These conditions included the focus of a large part of the economic activity of the principality of Catalonia upon trade with the Americas, the integration of the economy with that of the colonies[10] and the building a base of knowledge, skill and commercial contacts amongst merchants who came to consider an Atlantic voyage as an everyday occurrence.