It has taken nine no doubt heart-searching years, but the parents of 20-year-old Ruben Gois, killed in a road accident in Albufeira almost a decade ago, have finally won closure.

Their disputed claim to the FGA - the fund that covers traffic accidents when there is no valid insurance cover or when there is no-one found to blame - has been upheld by the Supreme Tribunal of Justice which ruled that €120,000 in damages should be paid.

Portugal has been named the 18th most reputable nation in the world, ahead of countries including America and France in an online list published by Forbes magazine.

Put together by the Reputation Institute (RI) it is designed to rank 55 countries with the highest GDPs.

The wave of public support for former PJ investigator Gonçalo Amaral has hit a new record this week, with over €50,000 now amassed to help him fight his appeal over the €500,000-plus damages awarded against him in the long-running civil action taken out by the parents of Madeleine McCann.

But as supporters shared the news, calling it a victory for “people who put their heads above the parapet”, an internet campaign trying to prove “there is no appeal” and that Amaral is simply raising money under false pretences is trying to gather steam.

As anyone who has lived and worked in Portugal for any time will know, the Portuguese are unconcerned about initials.

They seem perfectly content to have a health service abbreviated and widely referred to as ARS, and see no amusement at all in the decision to call a citizens’ advice bureau a BUM.

Now another group of clearly very lateral thinkers has come up with a new political party with the obscure campaign initials of PURP.

Days after the government scrambled to “fix” the arbitrary suspension of money-making golden visas, SEF border control agency has lobbed another politically scalding hot-potato into the fray.

Unless a decision goes their way in the next 10 days, SEF is threatening to bring the country’s airports to a standstill, causing chaos, frustrations and endless bad publicity in the busiest tourist month of the year.

At issue are the long-debated “statutes” governing pay and conditions for the country’s law enforcement agencies.

As the nation’s politicians lock horns in the run-up to autumn elections, the “truth” is that austerity and the policies demanded by the troika have seen Portugal’s public debt “skyrocket” 36.4%.

In simple terms this means that the Socialist government under currently-jailed prime minister José Sócrates left the country with a State debt of €164 billion, while the austerity-led government of the PSD under Pedro Passos Coelho with the backing of CDS-PP coalition partners has taken that total to €224 billion: an overall increase of €59.8 billion.

The data, supplied by public-debt ‘watchdog’ IGCP, translates into Portugal’s debt costing each of its citizens €21,350 - when in 2011 it cost around €15,650.

EDP has been quick to deny all responsibility but police, firemen and council organisers are still trying to discover what caused the death of three-year-old João Martins at a street party in Odivelas in the early hours of Sunday morning.

According to eye-witnesses, the little boy was next to a temporary post rigged up to support floodlights when he “started trembling with convulsions” and lost consciousness.

His father Pedro Martins scooped up the boy and ran for help, but there was nothing on-duty firemen or INEM rescue workers could do.

The general secretary of the Socialist Party has accused the government of overseeing the largest destruction of jobs for years and says he considers it "very serious" that the Prime Minister does not know, or does not care that he is misleading the public with his unemployment figures.

"In recent years we have lived through the greatest destruction of jobs seen for ages with 320,000 jobs lost," said António Costa.