Why is the default driver path not working?

I'm doing a project with CodeIgniter. When a user visits my page, I wish that by entering the address (in this case I am testing it on the localhost) of the site, access the home.php page.

I understand that to achieve this, the path $route['default_controller'] has to point to some controller where renderize the view I need.

Well, there is my problem. It does not happen. My route looks like this:

$route['default_controller'] = 'pages/index';

My controller looks like this:

<?php

  class Pages extends CI_Controller{

    public function index()
    {
      $this->load->view('frontend/templates/header');
      $this->load->view('pages/home');
      $this->load->view('frontend/templates/footer');
    }
}

And of course I have the corresponding views in views/pages/home.php and views/frontend/templates/header.php and footer.php .

Modify the .htaccess of the root folder a bit so that it looks like this:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
   RewriteEngine On

   RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^system.*
   RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php?/$1 [L]

   RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
   RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
   RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?/$1 [L]
</IfModule>

<IfModule !mod_rewrite.c>
   ErrorDocument 404 /index.php
</IfModule>

But when I go to the root route of my project, I just get a blank page. All other routes and functionalities work perfectly. Does anyone have an idea?