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Agrarian and rural history would see significant scientific and methodological advancements in the late 1970s and subsequent decades of the 20th century. Moreover, history in general, especially that which focused on subnational areas, expanded extraordinarily after 1974, driven by the political shift towards democracy and, above all, the development of higher education and the awarding of master's and doctoral degrees. This phenomenon was also influenced by the political evolution of local governments and autonomous regimes in the Atlantic islands, which made resources available to support research and publication on regional and local history.
In summary, national historiography progressed slowly towards renewal and the introduction of new methodologies and issues, particularly outside university circles, which remained resistant to change. However, regional and local history remained strongly attached to traditional formulas, and given the conditions of its production, mostly by amateurs and local scholars, it was only with the expansion of higher education and, especially, the academic work of postgraduates that it benefited from significant growth and modernisation. It is worth noting that in the 1960s, local history was already valued in final undergraduate theses presented at Faculties of Arts, which served as an incentive for graduates, many of whom were secondary school teachers and regional and local government officials, to continue their studies. Consequently, the significant renewal of regional and local history would take place in the last decades of the 20th century, in a more favourable political context and within the framework of the expansion of higher education, which enabled the pursuit of academic research with greater rigour and more modern methodological and conceptual tools.
