Antonio Muñoz Sánchez (Gijón, 1971) is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon. He received his doctorate in History from the European University Institute in Florence with a thesis on the support of the German social-democracy to Spanish socialism during Franco's dictatorship and the democratic transition. Currently he is working on the following research projects: 

1. Political relations between the Federal Republic of Germany and Portugal/Spain, 1960-1980. 

2. Relations between Spain and Portugal during the parallel negotiations to enter the EEC, 1977-1985. 

3. Spanish Forced Laborers in Europe during World War II, 1939-1945. 

The first one is based on the hypothesis that the German strategy towards the Iberian dictatorships relied on the same principle that inspired Willy Brandt's “ostpolitik”: the conviction that closer ties between the Western world and Portugal/Spain would stimulate the liberalization of both autocratic regimes. In order to avoid criticism by public opinion this pragmatic outlook of Bonn´s government towards Salazar/Caetano and Franco was not publicly defende. The investigation wants to explain this "südpolitik", presenting it as one more face of the European détente policy promoted by the German social democrats at that time. However, the evolution of the Iberian policy did not follow the forecasts of a slow transition process. In fact, the Carnation Revolution even put at risk the European status quo, forcing West Germany to come up with a new strategy aimed at "stabilizing" Portugal and avoiding political chaos in Spain after Franco's death. A key factor in this "emergency solution" for the Iberian Peninsula was the strengthening of non-communist parties. In the study of the influence of West Germany on the Iberian democratization processes, the research focuses on the support to the Socialist Parties of Mário Soares and  Felipe González.

The second project emerges from the observation that if accession to the EEC brought Portugal and Spain to the end of a low-intensity multisecular relationship, this change did not occur during the process that led the two countries to join the Community simultaneously. On the contrary, the long road to Europe was made with little articulation between Lisbon and Madrid, which also did not endeavor to anticipate bilaterally the European horizon to which they aspired implying a tightening of economic, social and political bonds in a spirit of brotherhood. The argument put forward is that Portugal considered Spain to be a serious obstacle to its rapid accession to the Community and, furthermore, a huge danger to its economy, when the boundaries between the two States disappeared. These considerations led the successive governments of Lisbon to try to completely separate Portuguese negotiations from those of the neighbour country, to seek an early entry and to defend with extraordinary zeal what they considered most appropriate to protect the Portuguese economy against the supposed threats of the imminent Iberian market.
 

The third project focuses on a novel subject in historiography: the Spanish forced laborers of the Third Reich. To date, there is no study of the several tens of thousands of exiles from the Spanish Civil War who were reduced to forced labor by the Germans during World War II. The investigation centers upon reconstruction of the living and working conditions of these "rotspanier" during the war, and the long and successful legal process they later took to be recognized by the Federal Republic of Germany as victims of Nazism.