The bankruptcy of Monarch Airlines has caused the cancellation of many group bookings at Algarve hotels during the winter season.
With the country’s tourism chiefs and government expecting a record 20 million overnight stays this year, the Monarch collapse and the Ryanair cancellations will affect the numbers, whatever the optimists are saying.
Four hundred kilos of high quality cocaine, which the police estimates as having a street value of around €20 million, were found aboard a yacht from the Caribbean and seized in the early hours of Saturday, September 30th.
The two crew members, an Italian and a Montenegran national, were detained and the yacht and illegal cargo were brought to Portimão docks.
A subsea cable between Sines, on Portugal’s west coast, and Santos in Fortaleza, Brazil, is to be laid with a commissioning date set for sometime in 2019.
The €170 million investment by Ellalink, owned by Brazilian and Spanish investors, will have a European base in the ZILS Business Centre in Sines.
An estimated 300,000 Catalans have observed a general strike today, October 3rd, to condemn Sunday's police violence at a banned referendum on independence. The government in Madrid has come under international pressure to resolve its worst political crisis in decades with Mariano Rajoy sticking to his opinion that the Catalan vote was illegal and that the police used 'proportionate force.'
A crowd several thousand strong gathered in front of the Popular Party headquarters in Barcelona chanting "Occupiers Out!" – in Catalan, obviously, with protests taking place outside Cuidadanos party offices across the region.
The Secretary of State for Tourism, Ana Mendes Godinho, says it is not just Portugal that offers tax benefits to foreigners.
Asked in Paris about comments by Finance Minister, Mário Centeno, who is working towards scrapping tax benefits for incoming foreigners, Ana Mendes Godinho commented, "My one and only message is: there are many countries that have regime identical to that of Portugal. Portugal is not a unique case."
Environmental association, Quercus, says that Portugal is way off hitting the 2027 Water Framework Directive as 70% of waste water is channelled back into rivers - and polluters are seldom investigated or punished.
With the current state of drought across much of the mainland, with rivers flowing slowly or not at all, and with polluters continuing to pollute, Portugal’s water system is in an unhealthy mess.
The total value of Portugal’s public debt increased this August and, for the first time, the total exceeds €250 billion, according to the Bank of Portugal.
The Portuguese State, underwritten by the nation’s taxpayers, owes €250.38 billion to international investors and banks.
The Ministry of Justice is to spend €500,000 on expanding the discredited SIRESP emergency communications system across all of Portugal’s prisons.
The Ministry currently is "undergoing a procedure to acquire radio equipment for further expansion of the SIRESP network in prison services," according to a report on the Portuguese prison service.
