The circuit arose from the broader Terramar residential development promoted by Sabadell industrialist Francesc Armengol. Terramar was conceived as an upmarket garden city modelled on the French Riviera, with villas, parks, hotels, and a range of leisure amenities. The racetrack was one of these amenities, designed to respond to the early twentieth century's growing enthusiasm for motor racing.
Built at a cost of 4 million pesetas, the Autodromo was designed by two architects: Josep Maria Martino Arroyo, responsible for the grandstands, and Jaume Mestres i Fossas, who authored the track project. The circuit covered 25 hectares at a site known as Mas Clot. The project also originally planned two smaller ancillary tracks, one for horses and one for motorcycles, along with a football field and a small aircraft landing strip intended for later conversion into a golf course.
The Board of Directors was chaired by Joan Pich i Pon, a former member of the Spanish parliament who later became mayor of Barcelona in 1935. The Honorary Committee was headed by the Duke of Alba, then president of the Royal Automobile Club of Spain. The presentation of construction works was held on 17 September 1922, with the Captain General of Catalonia, Miguel Primo de Rivera, representing King Alfonso XIII.
The track featured steep banking, and the transition between the straights and the banked sections was later identified by drivers as poorly designed, causing an abrupt and uncomfortable change in loading.
The opening ceremony was held on 28 October 1923. The inaugural race was for 2-litre Grand Prix cars. Albert Divo, driving a Sunbeam, won the event, defeating Count Louis Zborowski in a Miller at an average winning speed of 96.91 mph (155.96 km/h). No prize money was awarded.
The reason was immediate and disqualifying: unpaid construction overruns caused the builders to seize the gate receipts at the event itself, leaving the organising committee with no funds to pay the drivers. As a direct consequence, the circuit was barred from hosting international races in future. Several drivers also formally complained that the transition from the straights to the banking and back was dangerously designed.
Further races were organised in 1925 by the Catalunyan Automobile Club and the Penya Rhin, including a Spanish Motorcycle Championship in May of that year attended by King Alfonso XIII and Miguel Primo de Rivera, and a race where a Bugatti appeared for the first time at Terramar. Additional events were held in November 1925, January 1926, and December 1926, with motorcycle tournaments returning in spring 1927 and 1929 under Penya Rhin organisation.
In 1929, the state seized the Mas dels Frares and Clot d'en Sidos estates due to accumulated economic problems, and subsequently the whole circuit. The following year, Czechoslovak racer Edgar de Morawitz and a partner acquired the property with plans to reactivate it for motorsport. De Morawitz erected a building inside the circuit that housed a piston factory for the Champion brand.
In August 1931, the Autodromo briefly resumed activity with speed tests including a competition between a vehicle and a small aircraft, plus acrobatic flights. Motorcycle, cycling, and aviation events followed through 1932. Between November 1933 and 1936 no events were recorded. A planned car show scheduled for May 1936 was not held, and the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War two months later ended all activity. The circuit was used as a military recruitment centre during the conflict.
After the war, the economic devastation of post-civil-war Spain made revival impossible. The growing capability of new cars also made the steeply banked circuit increasingly dangerous at higher speeds. Following de Morawitz's death in 1945, the property changed hands several times. By the early 1950s the interior of the track had been converted into poultry farms, and the banking itself was progressively damaged by heavy trucks accessing the site. Agricultural use continued through the 1980s.
The circuit was rediscovered by Canadian enthusiast Peter Schomer in the 1990s. From 2009 onward, the track was cleaned and minimally adapted, making it usable for corporate tests and filming. Car manufacturers including Seat, Peugeot, and Aston Martin used it for vehicle presentations and promotional work. In 2012, Carlos Sainz Senior set a lap record of 0:42.600 seconds in an Audi R8 LMS during a Red Bull promotional video.
In 2018 Jeremy Clarkson, James May, and Richard Hammond filmed at the Autodromo for the Amazon Prime series The Grand Tour, with the extreme banking described as causing Clarkson and May to erupt in expletives and Hammond to make what the programme described as squeaky noises.
Sitges-Terramar is a monument to early motorsport ambition that was financially undone before it could establish itself. As one of only four purpose-built racing circuits in the world at its 1923 opening, it represented a serious attempt to bring the emerging motor racing industry to Spain. Its steep parabolic banking made it superficially similar to the great oval circuits of the era, but the track's racing life amounted to little more than a single season's activity. The banking and grandstand structures survive as physical relics of the early 1920s circuit-building era, and the site is recognised as a historic motorsport landmark, with various proposals for heritage-led restoration circulating in recent years.