The political, economic and social impact of agrarian reform in the conuntryside of Southern Portugal, 1975-1977

Abstract

Held on April 25, 1974, and in a context in which the land structure of the Southern Portugal is seen, almost consensually, as a blockade of the region's agricultural growth, a powerful vindication movement is being carried out, led by rural wage earners, around wage increases and job security, which leads to a process of land occupation, a reality that gives expression to an anti-broad and anti-capitalist agrarian reform, later outlined in the legal plan by the IV Provisional Government. The electoral legitimacy triumphant in the constituent elections of 1975 and consolidated on 25 November of the same year, in line with the challenge to agrarian reform developed by the great landowners and their political allies, creates a legislative building that gradually leads to the liquidation of the revolutionary process in the Southern lands.