October was the driest month for 20 years and the warmest one for 87 years with an average maximum temperature 5°C above the normal value.
The Portuguese weather service reports that October 1931 was a tad hotter than the one we have just had, with the 15th October being the hottest.
The number of births in Portugal increased in 2016 for the second consecutive year, but this did not prevent the Portuguese population from declining, as it has been since 2010.
Women are having more children, emigration is decreasing, the number of marriages has grown and the divorce rate is down but still this is not enough to stop the decline in the overall number of citizens.
Portugal’s latest wheeze is to sell zero euro notes for €3.
The first zero-euro bills have been released and are said to be aimed at collectors and tourists - not at duping partially sighted people.
The former Catalan president, Carles Puigdemont, said that he accepts the new regional elections planned for December, and understands the charges against him after Spain’s attorney general filed charges of rebellion, sedition and the misuse of public funds.
Spain's Constitutional Court officially has suspended Catalonia's declaration of independence and the police have been looking for evidence of sedition in government buildings.
Halloween (or dia das bruxas) is becoming more and more of a big deal in Portugal. Throughout the country, but especially in Lisbon, Porto, and the Algarve, you’ll see posters (or Facebook events) for Halloween parties and, depending on where you live, you may even get a trick-or-treater as well. This is obviously America’s cultural dominance on the rest of the world.
Or is it? Although the Halloween parties on October 31st feel new, Portugal has a lot of Halloween-related traditions that are not dissimilar to those that we associate with the English-speaking world.
Unemployment in Portugal fell to 8.6% by the end of September, according to figures issued by the National Statistics Institute which dropped the final figure from an estimated 8.8%.
The number of jobless for September is the lowest since 2008, but still represents 442,000 people as officially out of work.
Last weekend, an aircraft fitted with thermal imaging equipment, based at 502 squadron in Montijo, carried out missions over the countryside to detect fires and alert ground-based firefighters.
The patrols carried out by an EADS C-295M aircraft detected fires and hot spots so that firefighters could tackle them before they got out of control.
Cory Peyton, fifteen when on holiday in the Algarve in 2013, hit his head on the bottom of a one metre deep indoor pool at the Holiday Village resort in Albufeira, breaking his neck.
Peyton has been in a wheelchair ever since and is suing tour operator Tui for compensation.
