The Algarve’s Culture Directorate is applying to expand the protected area under which lie the remains of the Roman city of Balsa.
The Regional Directorate’s Alexandra Gonçalves said that DRCALgarve is to propose to the General Directorate of Cultural Heritage that it opens a ‘classification enlargement procedure’ as Balsa is a site of national interest and the current protection zone covers only a small section of the city’s remains.
The expansion and protection of the area under which the Roman remains lie will restrict land use by categorising Balsa as a Special Protection Zone thus stopping the current dangerous nonsense going on at the site where land leased by a local famer to a Spanish fruit growing company has been disturbed by the erection of commercial greenhouses and irrigation systems.
The land in question is located near Luz de Tavira in the eastern Algarve and is privately owned.
Gonçalves says that previous owners of the land deliberately and systematically, “over tens of years” have destroyed many of the archaeological remains yet there has been no concerted effort from the government’s many agencies to halt the destruction.
In 1991 a small part of the overall site was declared a ‘Bem Cultural Imóvel de Interesse Público’ and in 2011 a small Special Protection Zone was created in a weak effort to halt futher damage caused by invasive agricultural practices.
In 2015, the construction of greenhouses by the Spanish company Surexport drew complaints from residents and the authorities called a halt to the damaging work that had involved digging and moving significant amounts of earth.
The Culture Directorate for the Algarve then sent in a petition to conduct archaeological work and Surexport allowed a specialist team on site to carry out essential preventive work.
Then in July 2016, Surexport requested authorisation to install greenhouses in the Special Protection Zone to the north of the archaeological area.
The Culture Directorate said ‘yes’ to Surexport as there had been no trace of Roman remains in that particular area despite it being in the only area the government had bothered to protect.
This cat and mouse game will be over when the archaeological work defines once and for all, the area under which lies the Roman city and when a protection order is put in place that covers the whole site.
