The property which Faro council once valued at just under €450,000, which it needed to buy in order to complete the bicycle route from the Faro Riverside Park to Faro island, is privately owned and cannot be nabbed by the Environment Agency.
This is the view of the landowner and his lawyers.
The Portuguese Environment Agency says the land is in the Public Maritime Domain but landowner Valter Alfaiate is adamant that the land is his and he will not sell at the reduced price now offered by Faro council.
The ecovia bicycle route therefore is blocked indefinitely as the owner has denied access across his land which means the Faro Riverside Park route cannot join up the new route from Faro, via Gambelas to Faro island.
“I am defending what is mine,” said Alfaiate who has dug some defensive ditches and has placed a barrier across the route, at least until the council pays the agreed price.
The council wanted the help of the Environment Agency and the Polis Litoral Ria Formosa company to force a deal through by any means possible, including the normal tactic of intimidation without legal justification.
Polis issued Alfaiate a deadline to move out but this now has passed and it is by no means clear whether the company had the legal right to do so, one of its discreditedtactics.
The responsibility to finish the project, which has been in a deadlock for at least six months, is that of Polis but a vote yesterday by Faro councillors for the Polis president to be sacked will not help any working relationship.
The Portuguese Environment Agency says that the land is in the public Maritime Domain as Valter Alfaiate cannot prove the property has been in private ownership since 1864.
This is the date used legally to define whether coastal land belongs to the state or to private owners.
The Environment Agency told the owner to move out as he was there illegally and it needed to continue the bicycle path.
The deadline to hand over the property ran out on April 13th but Alfaiate is still adamant that the land is his and it is registered as such on the land registry.
Because of this interruption to the ecovia at the west end of the Riverside Park, a little used park which so far has cost €3.5 million, cyclists and walkers have been using a makeshift route alongside the railway line. This not surprisingly has provoked the national railway company Refer into putting up a ‘no entry’ sign stating that transgressors will be liable to a stiff fine.
The process to purchase the two parcels of land, with a total area of 12,000m2, plus Valter Alfaiate’s old house, began in 2011 and nearly four years later nothing has changed apart from the price.
Back then, Alfaiate accepted the council’s offer of €449,321 which had been approved at a council meeting in 2011 when Macário Correia was the Faro mayor.
When the new mayor, Rogério Bacalhau took over a year ago the price for the land had to be reassessed to ensure local taxpayers were getting a sensible deal. The valuation and offer dropped to €190,995 and Valter Alfaiate decided he did not want to sell at that price.
Then the Environmental Agency decided that it had some "historical information" to prove that the land belonged to the Public Maritime Domain.
"Is not it strange that this 'discovery' has only happened after refusing to sell at the price they first offered?" asked the owner, promising to fight to retain his rights.
As for the people who risk passage and use the railway line route, Alfaiate said that if someone gets killed by a train he will no doubt get the blame for that as well.
Had Macário Correia purchased the land when he had the mandate, none of this would be going on and bicyclists would be whizzing along in blissful ignorance.
