Public defense of the Doctoral Thesis by Eduardo Corales

DINÂMIA’CET-ISCTE is proud to announce the successful public defence of Eduardo Corales's doctoral thesis, entitled "POWERPOINT: Infraestrutura hidroelétrica em Portugal e o território como projeto”, held this past 3 March 2026, at Iscte – Instituto Universitário de Lisboa.

The present research addresses the political questions underlying the justification, conception, and construction of selected Portuguese hydroelectric infrastructures between 1943 and 1975. This work helps us to understand the trajectory of hydroelectricity in Portugal and how it merged a political project with a territorial one.

Through a historical analysis of decision-making regarding territorial planning and how dams constitute a physical representation of these decisions, the research will examine the reasons why hydroelectric infrastructures were built during specific periods, what the decisive factors were in implementing hydroelectricity, and what the ideological dimension was between Salazar's dictatorship and the infrastructures in this process.

Ultimately, based on a selection of cases from the national hydroelectric grid, the study argues for the close relationship between power, ideology, and energy. This allows us to evaluate why technical capacity, economics, politics, among other factors, converged in such a synchronized manner in the construction of large dams in Portugal at a given moment, and how this might shed light on our present and future energy landscape.