Undercapitalized population control is a fundamental aspect in the development of large cities and has a long tradition in Barcelona.  This paper puts forth the outline of an analytical framework for its main case study, Barcelona's Barri Xino, drawing from historical and ethnographical accounts.

The proposed framework may be useful to refine the study of Barri Xino's siege, as it happens to be subsidiary of a desocialized reading of territory and its population. This, in turn, is interpreted along with the configuration and maintenance of bourgeois normality, and in contrast with the exceptionality of proletariat and lumpenproletariat. Taking these premises as a ground, the article criticizes 'public space' concept and reads it as territory for the exception.