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latest update: 16-May-2012 18:33:23

letters

Re: Praia Grande project
Updated: 23-Feb-2012

Dear Editor,

Thank you for your most enlightening coverage of the Praia Grande project approved by Silves Câmara - at last we who live in the area know what is proposed. Having lived here for over 10 years, this is the first time I have ever moaned about the Portuguese authorities publicly.

Those Algarveans, who are not fishermen, will proudly tell you that they have a tradition of hunting, surely itself misguided in this century, yet they continually seem to shoot themselves in the foot by standing idly by and letting their Government and Local Government make decisions which certainly in the short and medium term may do them financial harm.

Firstly, it was the A22 toll road fiasco - still ongoing and still unsatisfactory - surely a costly mistake still to be resolved.

Then it was the ALLGARVE branding by the tourism authorities - another costly mistake. Sadly most of the planned events were attractive only to people who could not afford to support them.

Perhaps the powers that be could have done some research on what the people with money to spend would want to go and see.

Changing the branding back to what it was before will be costly yet again. Will the tourism authorities have learned by their mistake?

The beautifully designed, no doubt at great expense, new Tourist Office on the approach road to Albufeira in between Algarve Camping and the central roundabout, has never yet been open. Is this an admission by the authorities that there are no tourists about, or is it that having wasted the money before, they cannot afford to man it?

Now it is the possible development of one of the few remaining beauty spots in Central Algarve, with yet more hotels, private accommodation and another golf course at Praia Grande. The proposed complex will be immediately next to Salgados lagoon, the only remaining habitat for wildfowl in the area, and one of the best in the entire Algarve.

The flamingos and other resident birds (many of them extremely rare) will not come back, which means that the many people who come to the area just to enjoy this unique habitat, and the flora and fauna which go with it, will also not come back. Once that unique environment has been destroyed, it can never be put back together again.

More than one existing hotel in the region, plus restaurants and other business nearby have already closed down with the resultant loss of jobs. In the most recent development just the other side of the lagoon (albeit under the aegis of Albufeira Câmara), many apartments still remain unsold and the golf course that goes with that complex is struggling for survival.

Does Silves Câmara really think that yet another new complex will be successful when the one immediately next door is struggling? The new project, if it is allowed to go ahead, would merely be spreading ‘the client base’ even more thinly - a recipe for disaster.

If the people who have approved this project had taken the time and trouble to walk around the existing complex on the Albufeira side of the lagoon, it would have been plain for them to see that there are already too many hotels, too many unsold houses and apartments, and too many golf courses with far too few tourists and holiday owners available to support them. With the economic problems throughout Europe, this situation will not improve for many years, if indeed it ever does.

I know that this project is on the outermost limits of Silves Câmara, so the people in the town hall who have presumably approved it, will not have to live with it on their doorstep. In the same way, it seems that the Government in Lisbon is a long way from the Algarve. Do the politicians up there in the capital really know (or care) what happens down here or could it be a question of “Out of sight - out of mind!”

I only hope that if this project goes ahead and proves to be yet another costly failure, that even though the damage will have irrevocably been done, the people who have sanctioned it will themselves be accountable and that the Portuguese people will not allow their beautiful country, through mismanagement, go along the same route as Greece.

Tony Scriven, Quinta da Saudade