(2016) - Energia, desenvolvimento local e modernização social: A eletrificação do concelho de Matosinhos (1890-1980). FLUP: Dissertação de Doutoramento. (Defesa em 13.01.2017)

Electricity is historically related to commercial energy and network technologies that sustain the development and modernization of the societies, emerging as an energy alternative since the 80’s of the 19th century, coexisting in the domain of the energy infrastructures with the coal gas industry established since 1830. The early electrification associated to the “first comers” and more industrialized countries was supported by local and regional urban networks, interconnected from the 1920’s and 1930’s, enabling the emergence of national grids covering the regions of rural electrification, generating synergies inputs plus economic and social benefits. Portugal’s electrification dynamic was substantiated by the asymmetry of adoption, urban matrix and local dimension, aspects that characterized a lagged and delayed evolutionary process, stimulated since the legislative act concerning the National Electrification Law (1944), which combined with the planned economy promoted on the authoritarian regime of the Salazar Dictatorship and specified in the “Planos de Fomento”, defined the guide lines to build and set up the national electricity grid, bringing positive effects by the 1950’s – 1960’s. The circumscribed scenarios of the development and modernization induced by the electrification in Portugal, between its primordial steps and the first half of the 20th century, ascribes relevance to the microsocial environments case studies. Therefore this dissertation focus the electrification process related to the Portuguese town and county of Matosinhos, over the 1890’s to 1980’s, as an example of the geo-historical and geo-economy framework which had involved electrification, local development and social modernization at the Oporto city’s metropolization area and Portugal’s northern Atlantic coastal regions.Keywords: Electrification; Energy; Development; Modernization