A history of Spanish Republicanism, as told through the figure of Alejandro Lerroux (described by Raymond Carr as the greatest mob politician of the turn of the century). It examines populism not as a mass movement of discontent, but as strategic – mostly peaceful but sometimes violent – means of achieving specific political goals, namely the opening up of a liberal-oligarchical regime to a broader segment of Spanish society. Exploring the beginning of mass politics in Spain through the events and circumstances of fin-de-siecle populism, anticlericalism, charismatic leadership, and the use of a new type of political rhetoric, the author uses semiotic, linguistic and psychological methodology in order to construct a historiography of the period and its players.