Tireless Communist Party MP, Paulo Sá, has questioned the Minister of the Environment about a new hotel planned to be almost on the beach at Monte Gordo.
The council is all for the project and a green light is expected from Portuguese Environment Agency to allow the 'Meliá de Monte Gordo' hotel to be built.
Paulo Sá wants to know the Government position on allowing this luxury project as "recently, small houses have been demolished on the Island of Culatra" because they were too close to the water line.
Why is the situation a further down the coast any different, "Does the Government apply the same criteria when it comes to luxury tourist enterprises?" questioned the Algarve MP.
Environmental association Almargem has challenged the location of the hotel that is to be built using 8,000m2 of a seven hectare area currently designated for sports activities.
"The council now wants to allow the construction of a hotel practically on the beach and in an area that in the town’s Plano de Pormenor limits to “social and sports-related activities and buildings.”
“Why not use space already in the current urban network," asks Almargem, adding that locals already have lodged a legal challenge to the hotel on land already sold to the Hoti hotel group.
The new hotel is part of the Vila Real de Santo António council plan to renovate Monte Gordo, especially the front line beach area, to attract more tourists.
In March this year, the manager of Hoti Hotels Group, Miguel Proença, said the plan is to start construction in 2017 so that the hotel can start operating in 2018 or 2019.
Almargem has described the new hotel development as just another part of the “epidemic of destruction and occupation of coastal areas,” and say the hotel will be so close to the sea that it will be within the 40 metre limit for maritime reserve land,
Almargem say the project has already been decided. It appears that the laws that the rest of the population has to follow are flexible when a project is anything related to tourism - “the dark clouds of dubious interests are covering the Algarve again.”
The court will decide whether the planning laws have been broken but the State again may have acted outside the laws that it is appointed to uphold.
