The Local Universe provides an unique window into the process of hierarchical mass assembly on all scales, allowing us to investigate a plethora of systems, all of them satellites of the major assemblies, like the Milky Way and M33.
Among these satellites, the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds (LMC and SMC, respectively), thanks to their proximity and the possibility to resolve individual stars, provide an unique close-up of a pair of interacting dwarf galaxies. They are the most massive satellites of the Milky Way, providing the opportunity to characterise a pair of interacting galaxies. In the last decade, we have seen a renewed interest for the turbulent evolution of these irregular galaxies and their stellar populations, as witnessed by several dedicated photometric and spectroscopic surveys.
The study of the chemical composition of their stars is crucial in the understanding of the chemical enrichment history of these galaxies that are strongly influenced by gravitational interactions and matter exchanges with other galaxies. In this talk I will review some recent results about the chemical properties obtained from optical high-resolution spectroscopy of the LMC and SMC (field and globular clusters) stars in order to reconstruct their chemical evolution history.