Sant Josep Oriol (1650-1702) received a stipend, a benefice, from the Santa Maria del Pi parish and became very popular all over the city for the miraculous healings attributed to him. He was also venerated for his generosity in giving his salary to the needy while he himself ate very simply. This is where his nickname Doctor pa i aigua, Doctor Bread and Water, came from. He was beatified by Pope Pius VII on 5^th September, 1806, and canonised by Pius X on 20^th May, 1909. The beatification was widely celebrated in Barcelona and, as can be seen in the chronicles of the time, the majority of the city's festive imagery joined in the celebrations.The festival is held on 23^rd March, the anniversary of his death.

Around this date, the Associació del Retaule de Sant Josep Oriol from the Pi parish, organises a representation of the tableau Retaule de Sant Josep Oriol. The saint was interred in the church where the play is performed, and the work opens with a procession along some of the streets of the Gothic Quarter. The giants festival figures Mustafà and Elisenda, the gegants del Pi, take part, as well as the beasts Lleó (a lion) and Mulassa (a huge mule). A representative, or messenger on horseback announces the sanctification of Monsignor Oriol, accompanied by actors in period costume and holding candles and torches.

The work is in three parts. In the first, an announcer explains the saint's childhood, and in the second an actor playing the Baron of Maldà narrates the facts of his life and his miracles. In the final part, a group of choirboys sing of the agony and death of Sant Josep Oriol. The tableau has been staged every year since 1997, accompanied by ancient instruments playing a musical accompaniment of the time taken from documentation in the Santa Maria del Pi archives.