This argument of the impartiality of history and the past as the basis for a certain revisionism does not differ from the stance of other historians, whether from the nationalist or liberal camp. However, the methodological perspective it takes sometimes places it in a different position from traditional historiography. Take, for example, the assessment made of António Sardinha as a historian, considering absurd his intention to write a history of Portugal in the light of integralist doctrine and censuring him for writing history as if it were pure fiction (not in terms of style, but in terms of substance – A propósito de António Sardinha, 1944, pp. 33-34). Sardinha’s historiographical ideas, which sought to make history accessible to the general public by summarising certain topics and making general interpretations of certain sources without the support of auxiliary sciences such as palaeography or diplomatics, led Pimenta to accuse him of not mastering the techniques of the historian’s craft (“Objective history teaches precisely the opposite of what António Sardinha seeks to convince his readers” – Idem, p. 63.). In any case, it is clear that, more than the traditionalist revisionism of the liberal narrative followed by Sardinha – and which Pimenta followed in his own way – it was rather the way in which he carried it out, as an “impressionist thinker” (Idem, p. 44), that did not fit in with the objective method followed by the Vimaranense author in his works: “I started from the principle that everything was to be done. I did not copy a single line from anyone. All sources were reviewed and cross-checked” (Elementos da História de Portugal, 1934, p. viii).

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