These positive facts should not let us forget two important events that marked his personal and professional life: first, the climate of open anti-communism that he had to face in the ‘Summer of 1975’ in Braga, instigated by the more reactionary sectors of society and by the Braga Church hierarchy itself; and secondly, his failure to pass the provas de agregação (a university exam to move up the academic ladder), which he applied to take in 1978, for reasons that were never totally clarified and for which the composition of the jury appointed did not help. This event was referred to as “barbaric intellectual aggression” and “another act of terrorism”, and he later wrote in his university Activity Report (1979) that “wounded in his intellectual, scientific and academic brilliance, he waited unforgiving but serenely for the opportunity to submit himself to a new examination”. He never did this though because the process used by the jury to arrive at their decision, “through white and black balls with no written justification”, was not changed, this being a condition he said was essential. The topic chosen for the “lição de síntese” (model lesson) given on 7 April 1978 – “Formation of the Portuguese Workers’ Movement” – and the fact that the vote was taken by simply choosing white or black balls with no justification helps us to understand this outcome, which was more political than academic. Despite having undertaken an exhaustive search in the human resources department at the University of Porto and in the University’s Archives, the minutes of this academic event could not be found. In May 1978 he published with Editora Centelha, Formação do Movimento Operário Português – Memória de uma reprovação (Formation of the Portuguese Workers’ Movement - Memoir of a failure), with a dedication that reveals his intellectual dignity – “To all young workers and students, especially to my students, who deserve to see transparently the qualities and the human limitations of one who seeks to transmit to you what he knows”.

The feeling that history is useful from a comparative perspective and the possibility it gives us to understand the present is one of the strands that is most present in his work. Opting for Contemporary History also allowed him to express his concern to relativise incidents and, using the methodologies his training in Paris had provided him with, to identify mechanisms of change from a long-term point of view. The approach he takes, without neglecting the short time needed to understand major alterations, as illustrated for example in the detail with which he tackled the introduction of liberalism in Portugal, favours the understanding of sequences and the global view.

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