In the Taíno language of Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic), cacique means 'little Indian king'. In our country, it gave its name to the style of governance characteristic of the Bourbon Restoration (1874-1931), which buried the short-lived First Spanish Republic (1873-1874). Under the reigns of Alfonso XII and later his son Alfonso XIII, power was in the hands of a conservative oligarchy that manipulated election results to its advantage (they even went so far as to have the dead vote). In the Balearic Islands, in most towns, the local political bosses from Madrid had their own delegates, who were mainly industrialists and landowners. These delegates, often with the mediation of the Church, forced workers to vote for a specific candidate. Those who refused risked significant reprisals. This is documented by the historian Isabel Peñarrubia, author of the book Political parties facing caciquismo and the national question (1917-1923)Published in 1991. From Mallorca, however, there was one person who dared to break the political hierarchy imposed from the Peninsula to create his own. He was Joan March (1880-1962), a banker from Santa Margalida, in Verga. In 1918, to gain the support of the working classes, he ordered the construction of the Casa del Pueblo (People's House) in Palma, which would be inaugurated in 1924. He also made peasants landowners by selling them plots of land on credit, which he had bought from landowners. By 1919, the Mallorcan magnate had already taken control of the Liberal Party. The party would become the battering ram against the conservatism of Antoni Maura, from Palma, who, between 1903 and 1922, was president of the Spanish government five times. To gain even more power, in 1921 March launched the newspaper The DayIn the parliamentary elections of April 1923, he won a seat. However, four months later, General Miguel Primo de Rivera staged a coup, imposing a dictatorship that lasted nearly seven years.