António Miguel Pina, mayor of Faro, has accused the previous municipal administration of leaving projects without the necessary conditions to move forward, as well as leaving the council with outstanding debts to FAGAR, a municipal business responsible for water and waste management, amounting to around €2 million a year.
Speaking at the City Day celebrations in Bordeira on Monday, 7 September, the Socialist Party mayor said it was “time to put an end to the lie that has been told to the people of Faro for far too many years”.
The remarks came as Pina addressed the financial situation at FAGAR, which he linked to problems with the municipality’s water and sewage networks and the costs borne by residents. According to the mayor, the council’s outstanding payments to the company “help explain a paradox”: residents of Faro pay “some of the highest water, sewage, and waste charges”, while at the same time having to contend with “ageing networks and ruptures that disrupt our daily lives”.
“To all the political figures responsible in the municipality: we did not choose this narrative. We inherited this reality,” he said.
Pina added that “we are not ashamed of finding problems; we would be ashamed if, having identified them, we chose not to tackle them”. His criticism also extended to the preparation of certain municipal works. Reviewing the first ten months of his term in office, the Socialist mayor said he had inherited a situation that was “substantially tougher than the narrative that preceded it”.
“We found projects that were not sufficiently mature to proceed. Projects with funding attached to them, but without the conditions necessary for them to be launched,” he said. The previous mayor, Rogério Bacalhau Coelho, of the Social Democratic Party (PSD), faced significant legal and political scrutiny throughout his tenure as Mayor of Faro, namely over breaches of urban planning law, when he gave the thumbs-up to an illegal private motorhome park. Public prosecutors indicted Bacalhau and his Urban Planning Councilor, Sophie Matias, for allegedly violating land-use rules by approving the motorhome park back in 2019.
The project, located near Faro Airport on protected agricultural land, raised alarms due to allegations of favouritism, as the chosen developer was a former local leader of Bacalhau’s political party (PSD). At the start of last year, a court ordered that Bacalhau stand trial, with prosecutors seeking an additional penalty to prohibit him from holding public office in the future. Despite calls for his resignation from political opponents, Bacalhau maintained his innocence and chose to finish his mayoral term, before Pina was then elected in October 2025.
Bacalhau’s administration was also shaken by a major corruption probe within the municipality, with prosecutors formally charging five Faro Municipal Chamber employees with passive corruption and abuse of power relating to illicit activities and bribe-taking at the Faro Municipal Market.
The long-discussed Pontes do Marchil roundabout was cited as one example of this troubled legacy Pina referred to, revealing that despite being given the go-ahead by the previous administration, the project had been designed on land that was not owned by the municipality.
“When you design a project without first securing the ground on which it is to be built, you create a problem before creating a solution. We are correcting it, against the clock,” he said.
Education was another area where Pina pointed to what he described as a failure of the previous administration’s priorities. He cited schools operating with fewer support staff than required under legal staffing ratios, despite, he said, the Ministry of Education transferring the necessary resources to meet them.
“It is difficult to find an explanation for this other than a failure of priorities. Even harder to accept is that money intended for our children was not turned into people working inside our schools,” he argued.
The mayor announced that vacancies would be opened to increase the number of support staff by the end of the year.
Addressing expectations of more construction and development on the ground, Pina defended his planning work carried out since taking office, adding that these projects cannot be rushed. “I know there are people asking why more works are not yet visible. In a dystopian world, where some people live, perhaps that would be possible…” he remarked sarcastically.
The mayor of Faro acknowledged that he would have liked to have presented more openings and completed projects as part of the City Day celebrations. However, he argued that “there is an enormous difference between starting a project and beginning to transform a city”.
“You do not govern to produce headlines. You govern by understanding what exists, identifying what is missing, doing the sums, preparing projects, seeking funding, correcting what is wrong and creating the conditions for what is announced to actually happen,” he said.
Lastly, Pina acknowledged that the municipality’s maintenance and cleaning services were still not at the standard desired by his administration. He referred to an ongoing reorganisation, praised the efforts of municipal workers, and pointed to the storms at the beginning of the year, which, he said, had delayed targets and placed additional constraints on maintenance work.
In the closing part of his speech, Pina argued that the administration should ultimately be judged on what it manages to prepare and deliver, and on the city it leaves behind. “The rear-view mirror is there to understand where we started; it cannot be used to decide where we are going.”
Source: Barlavento
Photo credit: Edgar Pires
