The Vilamoura Marina in the Loulé council area has won the International Marina of Distinction: 2015-2017 awarded by The Yacht Harbor Association. The announcement was made today at the London Boat Show.
The awards is the top one for ‘International Marinas’ with Vilamoura winning the top slot three years running.
The Minister for Infrastructure, Pedro Marques, re-launched the western Algarve section of roadworks today as if it was something we should be grateful for.
The work, that should have been finished years ago, now has a completion date of ‘the end of June 2017’ which inevitably will run on into the summer season accompanied by a range of increasingly improbable excuses.
Today’s long-overdue meeting in Madrid, between Spain and Portugal’s Ministers of the Environment concerning the proposed nuclear waste dump at Spain’s Almaraz power station, ended early today with zero progress.
"Portugal is going to ask Brussels to intervene. If there is a dispute, it has to be resolved by European bodies," said the Portuguese Environment Minister after the leaving the meeting with his Spanish counterpart, Isabel García Tejerina, and the Minister of Energy, Álvaro Nadal.
Last year witnessed a dramatic decrease in the number of migrants who reached Germany.
From nearly 900,000 in 2015, the number tumbled to 280,000 in 2016, according to statistics released by the country’s Interior Ministry this week.This represents a drop of 70%.
Just ten kilometres from the controversial Quinta da Ombria development (pictured) in the countryside to the north of Loulé lies another ‘me too’ tourism project, also with Project of National Importance status.
Vale do Freixo and Quinta da Ombria are ‘tourist village, hotel plus golf course’ style projects that are more in tune with the Algarve’s existing coastal tourist offerings than in the treasured and ecologically sensitive barrocal where 'nature tourism' is the preferred option.
French security forces believe that between January and June last year, 26 smuggling trips were made in transport arranged by a small family firm which, over the whole year, would have shipped around 500 migrants across Europe, mainly from France to Portugal.
Last weekend, four people were detained in the Paris region for "helping the entry, movement and irregular stay of a foreigner in France."
The governments of Portugal and Spain have announced that ministers will meet on Thursday, January 12th, in Madrid after Lisbon received assurances from Spain that the decision to build a nuclear waste dump at Almaraz "had not been finalised."
This assurance has enabled Environment Minister, João Pedro Matos Fernandes, to make the trip to Madrid to meet with the Spanish ministers of the Environment and Energy.
The Association of Commerce and Services of the Algarve Region (ACRAL) has begun a series of meetings with regional politicians to complain about the EN125, IKEA and the dire state of the region’s high streets.
The president of the association, Álvaro Viegas, has already talked to the Portuguese Communist Party, led by Paulo Sá, and the Social Democratic Party’s José Carlos Barros and Cristóvão Norte.
