Two Comments on the Contemporary Period

I. The History of Portugal, Part III, authored by Rui Ramos does not explicitly examine the eternal problem of the causes of Portugal’s economic backwardness, and consequently it does not seek to develop any theory that might explain this. Yet it does confront us with this backwardness in a very direct way, and the reader feels a certain sense of frustration at not being able to find a clear and systematized answer to this problem. On page 524, we find ourselves confronted with a chapter entitled “Growth without Structural Change.”