Faro Council is taking possession of the campsite on Faro Island to remodel it and re-launch the area as a campsite in 2020, but this time, under the direct management of the Council.
The current occupants have no place in the Council’s plans, "unless they pay, of course, like you or me," said the mayor.
This argument has been going on for over a decade with the Council and the Association of Users and Friends of the Faro Beach Camping Park at loggerheads over the future of the Council-owned site.
In 2015, the Council threatened the 140 campsite dwellers with eviction, claiming it wanted to turn the area into a car park. The campsite lost its licence in 2003, so the resident families decided to run the place themselves. Each is charged €70-a-month for space and has access to water and electricity. Some residents have been there for years and claim they now have acquired rights.
There is a current, if rather confusing, agreement but Mayor Bacalhau intends to end this and evict the residents.
The Faro mayor says the project is approved and once the €450,000 budget is approved, work can start to upgrade water and sanitation provision and upgrade the buildings.
The mayor says the tender for the work will be announced next year and the work will be completed by the beginning of 2020 to provide 200 tent spaces, 84 of them for large tents, and 24 spaces for motorhomes.
The current users of the space can spend one more year in situ before being moved on. None of those using the space are in primary homes so the council sees their eviction as a simple matter. If there are any first home dwellers, (the Association claims there are nine) the mayor says this is a problem for the Association, not the Council.
Tourism trumps the re-housing of 49 local fishing families whom Bacalhau admits must be re-homed on the island when their current properties at Faro Beach are torn down as part of the Polis purge to rid the Ria Formosa islands of inconvenient dwellers.
One Council plan was to use the camp site area for the provision of new island homes for the displaced fishermen and their families but this now has gone by the board as servicing the tourist industry with tent and motorhome space takes precedence.
See: ‘Faro Island families to be rehoused on the mainland’
