After a gap of six years, the electricity regulator again is going to test EDP electricity meters.

The last audit led to EDP being told to repay €11 million to those customers that it knowingly had been ripping-off.

According to data released by the Algarve's hotels association AHETA, the average occupancy rate last December was 39.9%, 2.3% above 2016.

It was Portuguese holidaymakers that contributed the most to this welcome increase, up 3.2 percentage points. The Spanish, German and Dutch markets registered significant increases, while the British market presented the biggest fall with a drop of 3.6 percentage points.

The Portuguese Association for Renewable Energies (APREN) and environmental group, the Zero Association, today called for more effort on renewable energy production in Portugal as a way of increasing the country's self-reliance.

In a joint statement, the two associations looked at the 2017 performance and both have demanded a rapid expansion in renewable energy production for 2018.

In addition to EDP, another privatisation that is raking in the cash is Portugal’s formerly State-owned national airline which carried more than 14.2 million passengers last year, a credit to Gateway, the new shareholder at TAP whose experience is paying off.

Last year, TAP transported 14,274,000 passengers, 2.55 million more than in 2016, a growth of 21.7% over the year.

An astonishingly well preserved mural has been discovered behind an altarpiece in a northern Portuguese chapel.

Frescoes of over four metres in length and five metres high, painted in the early 1600s, show the story of St. John the Baptist. The work was discovered in the chapel of Santo Cristo, in Picote, when work began to restore the high altar.

Later in January, staff from the British Vice Consulate in Portimão will be holding surgeries in Silves and Monchique to provide information and guidance on registering as a resident with local Portuguese authorities.

If you live in Portugal for more than 6 months of the year, you should obtain a residency certificate from your local Town Hall. After living here for 5 years, you should apply to SEF, the Immigration and Borders Service, for permanent residency.

The President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, may have a smiley face and loveable character but many businessmen would not like to be in the position of EDP’s boss, António Meixa, as he faces a presidential inquiry into electricity pricing.

Rebelo de Sousa said on Saturday that EDP's recent increase in electricity prices is a matter that he is studying and about which he will be making an announcement.

Nurses working in the Accident and Emergency department of Faro Hospital say they have been, and remain, unable to cope with the incoming workload and that the rights of patients are being compromised - there simply are not enough nurses.

In a letter sent on Saturday to the chairman of the hospital board, the nursing team warns that in the face of such chaos, as was seen over the long holiday break, it can not be held liable for "possible or future events that result in harmful consequences" for patients or family members.