The Algarve’s Regional Health Administration (ARS) today claimed that the Ministry of Health has in the past three years paid special attention to the Algarve region to strengthen and improve the responsiveness of health care.

Last weekend’s demonstrations outside Portimão and Faro hospitals by a newly formed citizens’ movement aimed to highlight the decline in services and the shambolic management of the public health services in the Algarve and demanded the resignation of the Hospitals of the Algarve Administrator (CHA), Dr Pedro Nunes and for good measure the resignation of the Health Minister himself.

The recently privatised ANA, which holds the long-term contract to maintain and develop Portugal’s airports, has announced that it is to invest €65 million in 2014, 16.8% more than was spent in 2013. Lisbon will receive over half at €33.8 million.

Sources at ANA, now owned by the French ‘Vinci Group’ said that much of the money would be spent in operational areas to increase capacity at passenger check-in, baggage handling and security control areas.

Manufacturing output in the Eurozone grew strongly in January.

This was the best surge since mid-2011.

The Portuguese have more children out of wedlock than the Spaniards, and live shorter lives

Some Iberian reality from the National Statistics Institute concludes that in 2012 the percentage of live births outside marriage was 45.6% in Portugal, and 35.3% in Spain.

Portugal’s Ministry of Finance has picked the first week in April to launch Finanças' new draw which will dole out prizes with a cash value of €91,000 per week to happy citizens.

The tax authority is planning to give away cars, but the law provides for the possibility of the state handing out other, as yet undefined, goodies.

Mayor Isilda Gomes has ordered a working group to provide solutions for the council’s trading company Portimão Urbis which has accumulated unsustainable losses.

"The current situation is not sustainable, so there must be change," said Gomes in a statement about the failed municipal company.

A Chinese businessman with Portuguese nationality has been accused of having brought over a thousand Chinese citizens to Portugal, quite illegally.

The 41-year old was arrested in 2011 by the Serviço de Estrangeiros e Fronteiros (SEF) and was charged with 528 crimes but the judge let him go free pending trial. Unsurprisingly, the accused is now nowhere to be found.  

The planned Saturday protest against shortages of staff, doctors, materials and sensible management at the Hospitals of the Algarve saw over five hundred people gather and form a human chain near Portimão Hospital. The protestors called for the resignation of the hospitals director, Pedro Nunes.

"Pedro Nunes the Hospitals of the Algarve director should go, and Paulo Macedo the Minister of Health should go too," was the general feeling voiced by the crowd who carried various forthright banners, some reading "Pedro Nunes - leave the Algarve in peace and go back to Lisbon," which indeed is where he lives and where he was spending the weekend, rather than in the Algarve making an effort and addressing the crowd.