At the beginning of the 20th century, the Balearic Islands had nearly 370,000 inhabitants. Of these, about 300,000 lived in Mallorca and about 100,000 were gathered in Palma. They were one of the communities with the highest illiteracy rate. 77% of the population could neither read nor write – in the case of women, the figure was higher. It was from 1926 onwards, with the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, that a plan for the construction of educational infrastructure was devised to reverse the situation. The majority of those that existed at the time occupied old buildings reused as schools and had pitiful conditions of light and sanitation.