The recent media coverage of the planned red fruit farm near Luz da Tavira once again has highlighted the Roman city of Balsa, the remains of which are lying beneath 47 hectares of Algarvian soil.
Surexport, a company from Huelva in Spain, received the go-ahead from the Institute for Nature and Forestry Conservation (ICNF) to start erecting greenhouses on 14.8 hectares of farmland, some of which is in the ecological reserve. This permission needs further investigation to discover the extenuating circumstances.
A local complaint drew attention to the archaeological aspects of the area and the plan for large scale fruit production by the Spanish company which had leased the land.
David Santos of the Commission for Coordination and Regional Development of the Algarve (CCRD Algarve) halted the further erection of greenhouses as they has been placed in an ecological zone.
Santos gave the Spaniards 30 days to return the land to its original state and to remove the illegally erected structures.
Negotiations then began with the landowner to preserve the larger 47 hectare site so that it could be analysed, surveyed and carefully excavated by archaeologists.
The Algarve’s Regional Directorate of Culture is willing to manage the work necessary and already has agreed an outline plan with the landowner at Quinta da Aires Torre in Luz de Tavira, who at last has shown some willingness to cooperate.
The 47 hectare site of the city of Balsa now is covered by dozens of private properties and farms making coordination, until now, too complicated a task.
The two to six year project may at last see some cooperation between private and public interests and the revelation of a once great Roman city which was larger than Lisbon at the time of the Roman Empire.
The buried ruins of Balsa were discovered by Estacio da Veiga in 1866. According to his findings, the 47 hectares of archaeological remains include urban areas, cemeteries, port buildings, fish salting factories and residential areas spread along the Ria Formosa, between the Luz river and Pedras d'El Rei.
The site was classified as of public interest in 1992, but only in 2011 became covered by Special Protection Zone regulations to at least preserve the area until the time came for archaeological work to commence.
Over the intervening years, agriculture has taken its inevitable toll and many areas of potential archaeological heritage have been disturbed or destroyed.
Some of the Roman objects removed from the site are in public and private archaeological collections, most of them in the National Museum of Archaeology in Lisbon where these bequests from the estate of Estacio da Veiga still await the construction of the Algarve Archaeological Museum.
As for the Spanish fruit company, adios!
