The Llobregat River favoured the establishment of settlements along its banks. Sant Boi, in particular, enjoyed a privileged position there because a bridge was built across the river in the 13th century to link Barcelona and other bordering towns to the west of the province. It therefore became a stopover town, which greatly increased its commercial activity. A privilege it enjoyed until the 18th century, when the road was transferred to another bridge built in the town of Molins de Rei.

Agriculture and stockbreeding were the main activities in the town until these were replaced by the textile industry from 1917 onwards. The population growth that accompanied this economic prosperity meant that the town began to expand to ease the congestion of residential housing in the town centre: an irregular area around its old castle and Carrer Major. The town's urban expansion, based on a project by the municipal architect Antonio Pascual Carretero, began to take shape in 1905 and it was extended in a reticulated, ordered manner until the old Sant Climent de Llobregat road.

This new area - the current streets of Sant Miquel, Raurich, Montseny and Pi i Maragall - is where most of Sant Boi's Modernista architecture is concentrated, in the form of single dwelling party wall houses, except the house at Carrer Major 62. Modernisme was applied as a striking, new, formal style. The architects involved, who knew about Modernisme in Barcelona, designed a more sober, restrained version for rich inhabitants who had distanced themselves from the economic solvency and ostentatious desires of the upper middle-classes.

This is why Modernisme in Sant Boi is limited to façade decorations using multicoloured terracotta elements framing openings (doors and windows) or structural lines (cornices and corners), as well as a lively treatment of cornices and label moulds. With the exception of Can Garrofa, Joaquim Brou transfers this multicoloured work to stained glass windows. In terms of industrial architecture, aimed more at functionality and simplicity, echoes of the new style could be found in the irregular rhythms of openings and broken cornices (F. Berenguer i Bellvehí in the Cambra Agraria) or the aesthetic use of brick (Can Massallera).