[Sinopsis extraída de these.fr]

The hispanic ballad - the old sui generis cultural phenomenon which centuries ago spread wherever the Spanish and the Portuguese reached - still appeals to our studies in the present day. In this thesis the meaning of hispanic ballad, of oral tradition, of the singular accidental ballad, their respective themes, and above all, their main productive line, love, - is clarified. It is our intention to illustrate, sequentially, the likings for these hispanic ballads and to underline its favourable conditions as well as its present existence such as braganza's geography, its old customs and, particularly, the crop harvesting traditions. In regard to the hispanic ballad we must forward, as did Menendez-Pidal, the interrogation "how is the hispanic ballad faring nowadays?" to find out about this we organized and listed a detailed collecting starting in 1983 to the present, functioning as a fundamental resource. Based on the collection experience acquired along these years certain basic rules for the research were formulated, and compiled conveniently in the collected material booklet. One may conclude, therefore, that if the hispanic ballad still lives it is in danger of vanishing. Finally, this regional hispanic ballad was contrasted with the more general hispanic ballad, through the resource to the bibliography of published hispanic ballads, indicating the sites where these hispanic ballads are located. This allows us to better comply with the issues which have to do with the specificity of the braganza hispanic ballad and its positioning in the general hispanic ballad. The study of all these hispanic ballads in a unique thesis is not possible, for which reason only a summary, the correspondent bibliography and the history of fourteen of them were made. 597 versions of 93 hispanic ballads were chosen and they figure in tome II.