Political and historiographical autobiography

Abstract

In the form of an autobiographical essay, Carlos Barros takes a detailed look at his professional career from his origins in the field of technical sciences at the University of Santiago de Compostela to his culmination as a student of History at the same university and with a marked political commitment, in the context of the anti-Franco struggle of those years and the clandestine battle in the heart of the communist party. He intimately revises his conception of himself as a militant historian committed to the cause of freedom and resistance in the face of oppression. From the organization of the 1st Congress of History under Debate, he exalts the indispensability of dialogue and the permanent exchange of ideas. It reviews, from the historiographical point of view, the fundamental theses of peninsular feudalism, its most important representatives and weighs up the relationship between Marxism and the Annales School. Finally, it takes stock after the 1970s in order to think about the new paradigms that History presents.