En tiempos de crisis sanitarias como las que ocurrieron en Portugal en 1854-56, 1899 y 1918, especialmente en Oporto, donde el cólera morbus, la peste bubónica, el tifo exantemático, la gripe neumónica y la viruela mataron a un alto porcentaje de la población, las imágenes de las epidemias en los periódicos y en la literatura científica de la época nos permiten conocer el estado de la ciencia y las respuestas de las autoridades para controlar su difusión. La comparación de estas epidemias en Portugal con las de Chile —cólera 1886-88, peste en Valparaíso y Iquique en 1903 y gripe en 1918— en la bibliografía y en algunos periódicos de época nos muestran las semejanzas del conocimiento científico y de las medidas sanitarias aplicadas. Esto nos confirma la circulación del conocimiento médico y farmacéutico y el alto nivel de especialización de los médicos y científicos.

Since the 17th century, irrigation has been seen as a solution for reverse depopulation in the Alentejo due to the increase in agricultural production and the consequent land reform. However, only from the mid-20th century onwards there was a growth of irrigated areas. After more than six decades, this article studies the impact of the construction of the Maranhão dam, Avis, Alentejo crossing the proposed objectives with the respective demographic, economic and social developments. From the analysis of different statistical series, it is concluded that most of the objectives were not achieved. Avis is today a depopulated territory, with low development rates and a latifundium property structure. Additionally, there has been a rapid expansion of intensive monocultures, endangering the environmental sustainability of the region. This reflection based on historical analysis is fundamental at a time when the construction of new dams is being announced.

In Portugal important legal innovations have been introduced in local government, related to the problems of negative images associated with longevity and corruption, and a decrease in voters’ turnout. Independent local lists were introduced into the race in the form of citizen groups, mayors’ terms were limited to three and there was a parity law. Participative budgets and decentralized local council meetings have also provided new tools for citizen participation. The object was to discuss whether these innovations are real contributions for local democracy. Methodology included the analysis of the legislative process and its enforcement, and practical consequences, namely on new representatives and citizen participation.

The Portuguese landscape and its rural areas are the result of thousands of years of human presence, particularly since the late nineteenth century, when protectionist public policies were put in place to promote food self-sufficiency. During the Estado Novo regime, four main agricultural policies were enforced: wheat campaigns, internal colonization, agricultural hydraulic systems and reforestation. Nevertheless, there was a massive rural exodus, starting mainly in the 1960s, which resulted in the depopulation of 80 per cent of the territory. Nowadays, less than 20 per cent of the Portuguese population inhabits interior regions. This demographic change presents huge socio-economic challenges. Recently there have been new trends, based on land concentration and super intensive monoculture, which are incompatible with central and local governments’ policies and strategies to reverse depopulation. The sustainability of Portugal’s rural world, its landscape and the quality of life of its population are at risk. Four items were identified in this article: eucalyptus and pine forests, olive plantations, greenhouses and mining.

During one of the worst economic crises that Portugal has faced in the last decades, with a considerable debt to deal with, emigration, population loss, ageing and unemployment afflicted our economy and society, particularly in rural territories. The aim of this article is to access the main local and central government policies to fight depopulation and territorial inequalities, and their attempts at sustainable development. What remains in the Portuguese inland regions and how is it being addressed by the few who still believe in life outside the cities? What is the role of local government in the sustainable development of the territory? All over the country, and particularly in rural areas, there is an urgent need to attract people and investment (Almeida 2017a). What are the main issues addressed by the central government to deal with this problem? For this research, a database was built with the political programmes of the 308 mayors elected in 2013, which were subject to a thorough analysis, and the new socialist government recently approved National Programme for Territorial Cohesion, aimed at promoting a more balanced territorial planning. This article describes the demographic situation and compares the municipalities’ economic strategies. The results are yet to be observed, but these new local and central policies at least reflect a change of paradigm from the social-democrat coalition government (2011–15) and introduce a discourse of hope for inland regions, even if the political time of each government (four-year terms) is never enough to solve such complex issues.

The Portuguese 25th April 1974 revolution introduced a process of democratization. It was also the beginning of women’s general participation in elections, both as voters and elected representatives, as well as their recognition as equal to men in all aspects of social, economic and political life. After a historical analysis of women’s political participation in Portugal, we follow women in local government as members of the earlier administrative committees which ruled municipalities from 1974 until the first local elections which took place on 12th December 1976, as elected representatives from 1976 to the latest 2013 elections, and their present role as participative citizens. Although four decades have gone by, women’s representation in Portuguese politics is still low. A sociological study of this group reveals higher educational levels and specialized jobs, particularly in teaching and management, as well as party membership.

The Portuguese rural world no longer resembles the one described in the literature, mostly because people no longer live or work there. Farmers became brand managers and tour hosts, workers were replaced by machines and intensive farming shoved entire populations to urban areas. With depopulation, the agrarian landscape has been transformed into a place for leisure or nature preservation. How are the remains of the rural being addressed by the few who still believe in life outside the big cities? What is the role of local government and its leaders in the sustainable development of the territory and its dynamic? All over the country, and particularly in rural areas, there is an urgent need to attract people and investment to fight depopulation and unemployment. What are the differences between projects for urban and rural municipalities? Political and economic strategies of municipalities and private entrepreneurs are analyzed and compared.

In 1974, Portugal’s Carnation Revolution, initiated by the military, received huge popular support. Army officers, mostly of the rank of captain, started the Revolution, but then the politicians took over. While it was largely a ‘top down’ revolution, at the local government level ordinary people assumed control. In this article we consider those who made up the local elites before the Revolution, during the transition period that followed, and thereafter. We compare the local elites in Portugal during Salazar’s dictatorship with those under the Democratic regime, using a database of 6,000 entries containing details of 3,102 mayors and deputy mayors and 402 civil governors who held office between 1936 and 2013. Our main conclusions are that during the transition period the elite who had ruled under Salazar were almost completely replaced. A new group, from different professions and social backgrounds, took up the reins of local government. The Revolution produced a population willing to participate in the new order and take on roles within local government, but they did not always retain their seats after the first democratic elections.

In a small municipality in the Alentejo region of Portugal, the same group of families, defined by latifundia landownership or tenancy, dominated local political institutions for two centuries during which great changes occurred. Three revolutions resulted in regime transitions: the 1820 Liberal Revolution, the 1910 Republic and the 1926 Dictatorship, which led to Salazar's Estado Novo. Even though a few members of these families offered some resistance to each of these revolutions at an early stage, they all adapted their behaviour and kept local political control within their ranks. Local traditional institutions, such as the local council and mayor, charitable and welfare associations, and corporate institutions created in the 1930s and 1940s to direct economic activities, were all presided over and controlled by members of the same rural elite. This continued until 1974, when the Carnation Revolution and agrarian reform removed and replaced these old elites with new ones. The lords of the land remained lords of the village for as long as control over the main economic resource of the region was the major factor in the maintenance of political power. These land occupations were not permanent. The process was reversed as a result of political factors relating to Portugal's accession to the European Economic Community in 1986. Agrarian elites in Southern Portugal no longer control jobs or the economy and therefore they no longer control local politics as they had for several generations. The Carnation Revolution and agrarian reform removed the old elites and replaced them with new ones. Agriculture is no longer the main economic activity of the countryside. The rural environment has become a hiking ground or an all-terrain vehicles track. The future is elsewhere and the current economic situation and the absence of elites have transformed rural areas into depopulated regions.

How did scientific knowledge reach the public? Using the press and keeping in mind the population’s limited access to written material, this paper establishes how the latest scientific news was divulged to unspecialised audiences. In times of sanitary crisis in Oporto, such as the cholera morbus epidemic of 1854–1856, the bubonic plague in 1899 and the 1918 influenza pandemic, newspapers were important sources to access the information and advice given to the public. A database of 6700 articles, medical reports and advertisements published in daily newspapers reveals the state of the art of medical science. It also reveals the importance given by health authorities and journalists to the publication of recent discoveries and adequate hygiene procedures to prevent the spread of the epidemics. This is a subject that contributes to the debates on the dissemination of science and on the place that Portugal occupied in the international scientific community.

The presence of women in politics has increased worldwide during the twentieth century and is well documented (Inglehart and Norris, 2003). In Portugal, women have been elected and appointed to public offices throughout this period, but in quite a limited way. Estado Novo, the authoritarian regime Salazar established in 1933, which lasted until 1974, was the first to allow them to express themselves by vote, but in a very selective mode, for only formally educated women or family heads were allowed to exercise that right. Considering literacy was low, those women were a very diminutive percentage of society. The same criteria applied to elected or politically appointed offices, where Portuguese women’s participation was mostly barred. After the 1974 carnation revolution, has the Portuguese transition to democracy improved women’s participation in politics? Has the democratization process influenced women’s access to elected offices? Keeping in mind an historical perspective, this paper offers an explanation of the Portuguese political system and an evaluation of the Portuguese political class, in order to introduce the gender issue. Even though the democratic regime, established with the 1976 Constitution, is now over thirty years old, in fact there is still a “female sub-representation” in Portuguese politics, inscribed into the larger issue of women’s access to all aspects of social, cultural and economic life (Viegas and Faria, 1999). And the social and cultural characteristics of the group of women who participate and are elected and appointed to public offices remains the same as in the former regime: only a very limited elite of very educated women have access to government, both local and national. It can be inferred that the democratic regime has introduced quite a considerable amount of measures to promote gender equality, but other factors have also influenced the arrival of women into political offices, such as social and economic development, and the enormous enlargement of university graduates, a female dominated group.

Since the Portuguese revolution of April 25th, 1974, and the beginning of the democratic regime (with the first elections for parliament held on April 25th, 1975), political parties dominate the electoral process, both on central government and on the municipalities. The analysis of the political elites, their party filiations and recruitment and their social backgrounds has occupied Portuguese social scientists for the last years. With this paper, the author proposes to establish the relationship between these two levels of government, national and local, and access the importance of political parties in each of them. Many mayors’ political careers include vertical mobility, both upwards and downwards: from mayors to members of parliament to members of the European Parliament and ministers or even Prime Minister and President of the Republic (in the case of two mayors of Lisbon), or from ministers and members of parliament to mayors. In all of these cases, their party and their position within the party has played a central role, even when some individuals have pursued other party choices in order to get re-elected, or even have presented independent candidacies (only possible since 1997).

The author analyses the agrarian reform in the southern part of Portugal, which took place as a result of radical legislation issued right after the 25 April 1974 revolution. The municipality of Avis is presented as an example of this movement, because of its charismatic leaders and the huge adhesion of their followers, who set in motion land occupations throughout the entire region. Personal and group motivations are described, using both written (institutional and literary) and oral sources. Thirty years later, consequences of the movement can still be found in the region and new ways of life were established in order to cope with the changing rural world.