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latest update: 19-Jun-2013 09:21:38 |
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Is this what the Algarve needs?
Updated: 06-Jul-2012
Well done Algarve Resident. It appears that for a change a local newspaper is taking a stance on what could arguably be the most controversial subject (aside from the tolls) this year.
Your question ‘is this what the Algarve needs?’ should set all the planners, developers and the politicians thinking. Sadly I doubt that will be the case.
But let me move away from supposition and get back to fact.
Fact 1. I have friends in the Brighton area who regularly visit the Algarve in the off-season. Don’t they like the beach? Well they do, but their prime reason for visiting the Algarve is they are ‘twitchers’ (bird watchers to the uninitiated).
They have been coming to Portugal and particularly to the south for over 20 years and when CS Hoteis started their development at Pêra they were concerned about the affect this would have on this area of beauty and tranquillity. They were of course right to be concerned, for as we have read in the Algarve Resident over the years there has been (among other issues) concerns about the water in the lagoon.
When I called my friends last week after reading your article, you could almost feel the heat of their frustration at the rape of another beautiful part of the Algarve. I am sure that by now they will have contacted their twitcher friends who number hundreds across the world.
Fact 2. The Algarve already has more than its fair share of developments (three star, four star, five star), with conference facilities, without conference facilities, with golf courses, without golf courses. Need I go on? But to vent my spleen, someone in authority somewhere has to recognise that if we have to destroy another part of the Algarve surely there is a need for something different in the Algarve. Not just another hotel on a golden stretch of beach.
And then on to the big question raised by my husband.
What sort of checks including due diligence are carried out on companies to whom these sorts of contracts are awarded. In many concelhos across the Algarve we find eyesores – developments which have been started and then abandoned, either due to licencing issues or the liquidation of companies.
And is there a chance that the company to whom the contract has been awarded could sell on the contract to another entity? – the outcome could be disastrous.
So, I think it is time we heard from President Isabel Soares and her team of advisers. Her statement in your article last week made no sense whatsoever and could just as easily have been applied to a new bus route from Carvoeiro to Lagoa.
Tell us President Soares, is this project being subjected to environmental studies and if so who will carry out the studies and when will they be carried out – before the first sod of earth has been turned or only when the hotel is well on its way to completion?
My final thought is this. Even if, despite all our protestations, this project goes forward, two years seems a relatively short period of time to put in place the infrastructure and for the first hotel to be built.
We see on the TV and read in your columns that Europe will take some considerable time to recover from the economic challenges we currently have. We also know, through your columns that there is no budget for marketing the Algarve to potential visitors abroad. So where are the visitors/tourists going to come from to fill the beds in 2015?
JEAN BRAND
By email
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