Pobles

Pobles is the Catalan plural noun derived from the word poble. In Catalan, the primary sense of poble is “the people” or “the population” of a community, so pobles denotes “the peoples” or “populations.” The term appears in contexts related to citizenship, culture, and collective identity, for example el poble català meaning “the Catalan people.” In some historical or regional texts, pobles can also appear in reference to distinct communities within a region, though in everyday speech other words are often used to denote a village or town.

The closest cognate in Spanish is pueblo, with the plural pueblos, which means towns or villages and more broadly can refer to the people of a country. The two words share the same Latin root, populus, but have developed different common senses in their respective languages.

In modern Catalan usage, when a geographic settlement is meant, writers more commonly use vila or poble in certain contexts, or other terms like població for “population.” As a result, pobles tends to have a stronger association with the sense of people or communities, and is more frequent in formal, historical, or literary registers, or in institutional names that preserve traditional meanings.

See also: poble, pueblo, població.