The Algarve’s hotels are less crowded with British holidaymakers this summer due to the fall of the value of sterling against the euro.
This 15% drop in the pound’s value, after a slim majority of the UK’s voters decided that ‘enough was enough’ and to leave the European Union, has been noticed in the Algarve as in July alone, hotels registered 56,000 fewer British tourists than a year earlier.
Portugal’s Minister for Internal Administration Constança Urbano de Sousa, has been forced to ask for help from European neighbours as the country continues to suffer from hundreds of fires raging across the central zone.
Extra air support, one Canadair aircraft and two 'Air Tractors' plus ground support teams, have been sent from Madrid to help tackle the most intense period of fires the country has ever experienced. Other countries are busy with fires of their own and, in Greece's case, is helping out in Albania.
Portugal’s much-vaunted Golden Visa programme is failing to serve those whom it wishes to attract, with delays at the Foreign and Borders Service due to staff shortages and redeployment of key staff to Lisbon airport.
Investors pay €500,000 upwards for qualifying properties but are having to wait at least three months for the first meeting with SEF staff in Lisbon and are not allowed to arrange appointments in areas outside the one in which they are buying their property.
Portugal Telecom, now owned by the French company Altice, is trying to slim down its work force by devious means, ‘informally inviting’ around 400 customer service employees to simply give up their contracts.
Union boss, Jorge Félix, said "the aim is to employ outsourced workers, earning less," adding that if employees did not accept the terminations , he "does not know what will happen to them."
A report from the Office of Aircraft Accident Prevention and Investigation states that the instructor of a Cessna 152, "made several attempts to start the engine" but was unsuccessful after it had cut out just minutes after taking off, later killing two people on the Costa da Caparica beach in Almada, south of Lisbon, where it made an emergency landing.
The engine had stopped four minutes after take-off, after the aircraft "was hit by a very strong upward current."
Portugal’s Prime Minister, António Costa, opened the Olhão 32nd Seafood Festival on Thursday evening, along with plenty of socialist back-up with Minister of the Sea, Ana Paula Vitorino, the Deputy Minister, Eduardo Cabrita and José Apolinário, the Secretary of State for Fisheries and Miguel Freitas, the Secretary of State for Forestry and Regional Development.
The idea was to bolster support for the socialist mayor, António Pina, who hopes to be re-elected on October 1st but is facing dwindling support as he attempts with increasing desperation to pull in favours and appeal to a jaded electorate.
Heatwave Lucifer has managed to bake much of southern Europe, with Portugal especially badly hit by a series of devastating forest fires, the latest of which started on Wednesday and continues to threaten the country as the weekend approaches.
The worst fire started on Wednesday evening in the Abrantes region in central Portugal and needed 680 firemen and eight planes and helicopters to stop it spreading in the face of variable strong winds and dry conditions.
Portugal Finance Minister Mario Centeno 'has not excluded the possibility' of becoming the next president of the Eurogroup following media reports that he could replace Jeroen Dijsselbloem who lost his job as finance minister in the Dutch general election in March.
The Eurogroup is made up of the 19 finance ministers from the euro area countries and currently is led by the Dutch Finance Minister who was meant to continue as its president until January 2018, until electoral disaster struck back home.
