The Barcelona Symphony and Catalonia National Orchestra has had foreign conductors and has presented music from other parts of Spain as well as other countries. Yet as its name suggests, the ensemble has been uniquely identified with music of Catalonia.

Barcelona has supported a variety of civic and private orchestras since the mid-19th century, including the Orquesta Pau Casals, disbanded after the fall of Spain's Republican government. The Orquestra Simfònica de Barcelona, founded by conductor Eduardo Toldrà, replaced it in 1944. Toldrà remained chief conductor until 1962, after which the group was renamed the Orquestra Ciutat de Barcelona. In 1994 it was given its current name, Orquestra Simfònica de Barcelona i Nacional de Catalunya in Catalan (the group's website includes neither Spanish nor English), or OBC for short.

The orchestra has given the premieres of major works by Catalonian composers including Xavier Montsalvatge's Mediterranean Symphony in 1948, Càntic Espiritual in 1960, and Desintegració morfològica de la xacona de J.S. Bach in 1963; Federico Mompou's Variaciones sobre un tema de Chopin in 1961; and many works by Josep Soler, including the opera-oratorio Oedipus et Ioacasta in 1974. The OBC has recorded for Koch International, BIS, Columna Musica, Alpha, and Naxos, on which it released a set of orchestral music by Enrique Granados in 2017. The orchestra formed its own house label in the mid-2010s. Its conductor since 2015 has been Kazushi Ono. ~ James Manheim, Rovi