The Branches of Large Electricity Companies in Portugal: From Trade to the Transfer and Adaptation of Technology (20th Century)

In the last decade of the 19th and first decades of the 20th century there was a movement of capital and engineers from the central and northern Europe to the countries of southern Europe and other continents. Large companies sought to obtain concessions and establish branches in Portugal, favouring the circulation of technical knowledge and transfer of technology for Portuguese industry. Among the various examples of the representatives of foreign companies in Portugal we find Jayme da Costa Ltd. established in 1916 in Lisbon, which was a branch of the Swedish company ASEA, as well as STAAL, ATLAS DIESEL (Sweden), Landis & GYR (Switzerland), Electro Helios, etc.. Another example is EFACEC a company founded in 1948 in Porto, that was a partnership between the Portuguese company CUF – Companhia União Fabril, and ACEC – Ateliers de Constructions Électriques de Charleroi and a small entreprise Electro-Moderna Ldª. This enterprise started the industrial production of electric motors and transformers, and later on acquired a substantial share of the national production of electrical equipment. Using Estatística das Instalações Elétricas em Portugal (Statistics on Electrical Installations in Portugal) from 1928 until 1950 we can identify the foreign enterprises acting in the Portuguese market: Siemens, B.B.C, ASEA, Oerlikon, etc. We can also establish a relationship between the development of the electric network and the growth of production and consumption of electricity in the principal urban centres. Finally we see how foreign firms were a stimulus to the creation of national enterprises, especially those of small scale, in Portugal.

Mário SAA (1893-1971): Um intelectual português na sociedade do século XX

Mário Saa (1893-1971) - um percurso de índole nacionalista, onde se cruzam a literatura, a ciência, a filosofia e a história. Pretende-se revelar o trajecto de um intelectual português da direita conservadora do início do século XX, numa perspectiva transnacional. Aborda-se o seu percurso intelectual, analisando os reflexos da identidade europeia na sua produção cultural. Através do seu legado depositado na Fundação Arquivo Paes Teles, no Ervedal, uma freguesia do concelho de Avis, acedemos ao tempo da sua formação académica e às temáticas que abordou na sua vasta e diferenciada produção cultural. Descobrem-se os seus círculos de sociabilidade literária e intelectual, e entende-se a construção da sua consagração através de um conjunto de dedicatórias gravadas nos livros da sua biblioteca. Um legado que permite aceder à sua «modernidade» decorrente da interacção com a Europa intelectual e do seu contexto de vivências variadas. /ABSTRACT: ln this paper we examine the career of the nationalist thinker, Mário Saa (1893-1971), whose achievements were in the fields of literature, science, philosophy and history, as a model of the right-wing conservative Portuguese intellectual at the beginning of the 20th century from a trans-national perspective. We trace his intellectual trajectory, analysing the influence of European identity on his cultural output. The complete works of Mário Saa, housed at the Paes Teles Archive Foundation in Ervedal, a parish in the district (concelho) of Avis, provide us with a window on the period during which he completed his academic training and the topics he examined in his extensive and varied cultural works. We profile the literary and intellectual social circles in which he moved, and seek to gain an understanding of how his reputation carne to be established by analysing the dedications contained in books from his library. Mário Saa's legacy enables us to understand the ‘modern’ nature of his work, deriving from his interaction with European intellectuals and the context of his varied experience.

Le Corbusier (1887–1965)

Le Corbusier was a Swiss architect and urbanist who acquired French nationality in 1930, having set up his studio (“the atelier of patient research”) in that country. Just as he assumed an unconditional continuity in relation to the past, he also clearly confronted the circumstances of his time. Many of his works became icons of Modernism, like the Villa Savoye (1928), the Marseilles Housing Unit (1945), the Ronchamp Chapel (1950), the Convent of Sainte-Marie de la Tourette (1953) and the Chandigarh Capitol Complex (1950-55), to mention just a few examples. His architecture reflected the development of a modern industrialized economy, a western avant-garde society and a vibrant political and social context. He made a mark not only with his constructed work, but also with designs that were never built (and which were progressive in character), his painting (which reflected his experimentalist nature) and with his theoretical texts, which today bear witness to his modernist doctrine. Le Corbusier was above all one of the most prolific thinkers of Modernism, and one of the greatest figures of the 20th century.