This book scrutinizes the unfolding of mass politics in Spain in the shape of the republican movement and in particular the figure of Alejandro Lerroux, who led the radical left in Barcelona in the first decade of the twentieth century. By drawing on semiotic, linguistic and psychological approaches, the author analyses populism, anticlericalism, and the role of charismatic leadership in order to account for the transformation of Spanish political life. Most crucially, populism is reinterpreted not as a movement of protest but as a strategic means of opening up the oligarchical political...