The Algarve Left Bloc MP João Vasconcelos has called for an urgent meeting with the Secretary of State for Planning and Nature Conservation. The topic is the Vale do Freixo Golf & Country Resort planned for a protected area of countryside to the north of Loulé.
Vasconcelos says that the project received a Project of National Importance (PIN) classification, but argues that it should not have done as it “violates national and Community legislation.”
The Left Bloc MP added that it is vital to understand the decision making process involved and what the government plans are for the future of the project.
The project is large - two hotels, a golf course and eight tourist villages, spread over 400 hectares of barrocal countryside which was meant to be protected as part of the Natura 2000 network.
The construction is right on top of the important Querença-Silves aquifer and the project, "violates fundamental areas set aside for the conservation of biodiversity and which are subject to European environmental restrictions,” says Vasconcelos.
The promoters claim that the Vale do Freixo Golf & Country Resort will create 1,700 tourist beds and 350 direct jobs and, in a bizarre twist of reasoning, says it is next door to the equally inappropriate Quinta da Ombria so should be allowed the same permissions.
The €210 million Quinta da Ombria tourist and golf resort in equally unspoiled Loulé countryside, also was meant to be in the protected Natura 2000 area between Tôr and Querença but has an opening date of 2018.
The US Viceroy Hotels & Resorts company is in charge of the Ombria project and stated in September 2015 that it was nearing the end of a public consultation period for the hotel and the golf club.
The Quinta da Ombria project is in an unspoiled rural landscape and includes a five-star hotel, an 18-hole golf course with club house, restaurants and bars, a spa and 4-star holiday villages "all integrated as a contiguous zone of leisure and wellness inserted in a unique natural landscape."
Quinta da Ombria was the subject of the complaint League for the Protection of Nature (LPN) in Brussels.
At issue was the protection of the Querença aquifer and other ecological aspects. The protest helped to delay the start of project for more than two decades. It finally was unlocked after undergoing profound changes from the originally planned construction.
Environmentalists question the point of having these protected areas when the government can, and does, allow PIN status projects to go ahead anyway, usually based on vastly inflated job creation figures. Remember the Autodrome with its promise of 1,650 direct jobs and 1,000 indirect jobs. There currently are around 40 employees at the track.
Whether MP João Vasconcelos will find grounds to halt the Vale de Freixo project as being “a resort to far” remains to be seen but the trampling over protected zone legislation has been aided by successive governments which all have put big business before the natural environment and local sentiment.
