Es is a dialectal form of the masculine article el, hence Despí would be rendered Del pi in standard Catalan.

It is full of Art Deco buildings, many of them designed by Josep Maria Jujol who was the official town council architect from 1926.

It also contains the oldest buildings of the town including Esglèsia de Sant Joan Batista (Saint John the Baptist Church) and a small medieval chapel.

Les Planes (Catalan for 'the plains') is a district which appeared during the 1960s and the 1970s to house the incoming immigration from other Spanish regions especially Extremadura and Andalusia.

Eixample (Catalan for 'extension') is a new quarter, being built since 1998, during the real estate bubble in Spain, as an extension toward the Llobregat river of the Barri Centre.