Some of the residents of the eastern end of Praia de Faro are not willing to abandon their homes, considered clandestine, demanding the same rights granted to the fishing community on Ilha da Culatra.
The fires to relocate residents who want to leave the ends of the beach integrated into the Ancão Peninsula should be ready by April, as part of a process that has been going on for more than a decade, although the problem is much older.
To get to the house of Gilberto Silva – born on the beach and living on the eastern end of the peninsula for over 50 years – you have to walk about half a kilometer on a wooden walkway that starts at the end of the road and goes almost to Barrinha.
Now retired, the 73-year-old fisherman represents the third generation of his family to live there and before moving to one of the ends of the beach, his family lived in a wooden house in what is now the Faro Municipal Camping Park.
“The problem began when the first demolitions took place, in 1956, when the City Council took administrative possession of the central area of the beach, where the fishermen lived and where the road was built”, he recalls.
At that time, people were “pushed” from the disused area of the Maritime Public Domain to the east and west ends, bordering the municipality of Loulé, and began to build houses there.
In 1987, the year in which the Ria Formosa Natural Park was born, more demolitions took place: 204 houses in the far east were destroyed, when Cavaco Silva’s Secretary of State for the Environment was Macário Correia, from the Algarve.
The process would be resumed 20 years later with the creation of Polis Litoral Ria Formosa, which in 2010 began surveying the buildings on the barrier islands in the municipalities of Faro and Olhão, where it identified more than 700 illegal constructions.
“They say the danger on the beach is at the ends, but the central area is the most dangerous. That’s where the sea comes up the road”, says Gilberto Silva, promising that he won’t leave the beach, much less “to an apartment in Montenegro paying rent”.
Another resident, Luís Marmelete, 52, shares the same opinion: “there is no guarantee of a future for people who made their home with their efforts. There, if they don’t pay [a renda]are evicted. Under current conditions, most do not want to leave.”
The president of the Association for the Defense and Development of Praia de Faro (APRAFA) argues that people should be rehoused in their own homes, as theirs “also have their value”, suggesting the possibility of an “adjustment” of values.
Luís Marmelete considers that residents of houses considered illegal in Praia de Faro, as they are in a risk area, are discriminated against in relation to those on Culatra, a barrier island in the same municipality where the resident fishing community remained.
“There, fishermen have property rights and are recognized. Give us a title [de propriedade] of 20 or 30 years, as long as we live and, if we don’t have descendants, it’s over. That was fair”, he claims.
In 2010, Polis had identified 100 families that would need relocation, but, according to Gilberto Silva, some residents have already died and at this point there should be a maximum of 80, counting both ends.
Last week, the Government announced the investment of 20.2 million euros in priority coastal protection works, a package that includes the renaturalization of the Ancão Peninsula, through the removal of illegal constructions and the reinforcement of dune systems.
Demolitions in the Ria Formosa within the scope of the renaturalization plan foreseen in the Coastal Planning Plan () Vilamoura – Vila Real de Santo António began in 2014 with the demolition of illegal constructions on the islets.
In 2015, the first demolitions took place in Praia de Faro, followed later, from 2017, by the centers of Farol and Hanares, on the island of Culatra, under strong popular protest. In 2018, the cycle of demolitions on the Ria Formosa barrier islands ended.
- By Martha Duartejournalist at Agência Lusa
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