The new public tender for a company to run the Portimão to Bragança air service has been announced by the Minister of Infrastructure.

The concession period increases from three to four years and the taxpayer-funded subsidy rises from €7.8 million to €10 million, 30% more than the current concession which ends on 22 December this year.

The historian José António Martins will go to London next April to find out which books were stolen from the Diocese of the Algarve when Faro was sacked by Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex, in 1596, (pictured left, with ruff and fashionable beard).

The plundering Earl took the library’s contents back to England where later they were gifted to his friend Thomas Bodley in 1602 and became part of the Bodleian Library at Oxford University.

Portimão Council’s President, Isilda Gomes, has accepted the flag that distinguished the municipality as the European City of Sport 2019, from Gian Lupattelli, the president and founder of the Association of European Capitals of Sport.

The award was presented at the European Parliament, where the Councillor for Sport, Teresa Mendes, was present at a ceremony that brought together representatives of more than 30 European cities.

Monchique Council has foregone around €500,000 in property transfer tax, handing an exemption to a group of investors buying the Caldas de Monchique Spa Resort.

Adrian Bridge, the CEO of the Fladgate Partnership, Unlock Boutique Hotels and one of the companies that owns the Águas de Monchique bottled water business, have agreed to buy the site from Fundação do Oriente.

An imbalance between demand and supply is continuing to drive strong price growth in Portugal’s residential property market, the latest housing market survey suggests.

A similar picture is depicted in the lettings market, where rents continue to rise firmly on the back of solid tenant demand and falling landlord instructions, according to the October trend report from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) and Confidencial Imobiliário.

Portugal’s government has reaffirmed its commitment to achieving carbon neutrality by 2050.

The Minister of the Environment and Energy Transition, João Pedro Matos Fernandes, and the deputy Economy Minister, Pedro Siza Vieira were at presentation on the 'Route to Carbon Neutrality 2050' and fully back proposals to hasten the shift from hydrocarbons to renewables, the increase in solar energy production, a reduction in emissions of greenhouse gases by industry and waste reduction.

Aníbal Cavaco Silva, Portugal’s President from 2006 to 2016, has been invited by the current President of the Republic of Portugal to attend the today's funeral of the former President of the United States, George H. W. Bush who died on November 30th, aged 94.

Cavaco Silva has travelled to Washington at the expense of Portuguese taxpayers and ‘with the agreement of the government,’ according to the President’s website.

Somewhat late in the day, Portugal’s parliament has approved plans to recognise victims of the Inquisition. A memorial day will be established for March 31st, the anniversary of the end of the Inquisition in 1821.

Reconectar, a movement to reconnect with the Jewish world the descendants of Spanish and Portuguese Jewish communities that forcibly were converted to Catholicism, welcomed the establishment of the memorial day which has been confirmed by Portugal’s Commission for Culture.