For the first time in more than 100 years, the Al­garve has a res­id­ent Rabbi to serve its grow­ing Jew­ish com­munity. Zev Schwarcz, 50, hails from Ch­icago and ar­rived to live in Al­bu­feira, with his wife and three year old daugh­ter, straight from New […] »

BFP, Edition 714 ( 2 Feb 2012), No Comments

More than a quarter of a cen­tury ago, when he was a sculptor’s ap­pren­tice, Sören Ernst used to be reg­u­larly sent to a base­ment at the end of a long day chip­ping away at stone, to take plaster casts of clay mod­els in pre­par­a­tion for their cast­ing […] »

ND, Edition 714 ( 2 Feb 2012), No Comments

Por­timão’s bor­ough coun­cil led by Manuel da Luz has de­cided to pave the way for a “par­ti­cip­at­ory budget” – open to all voters and res­id­ents with ideas for their town, for up to 200.000 euros each. In the ini­tial stages, cit­izens will be able to tender […] »

Edition 714 ( 2 Feb 2012), No Comments »

This year may well see an end to events under the “Allgarve” cul­tural pro­gramme. Al­though res­ist­ing the demise, ERTA, the re­gional tour­ism board, is ad­van­cing with an al­tern­at­ive plan for 2012. At a press con­fer­ence last Fri­day, António Pina re­vealed […] »

Edition 714 ( 2 Feb 2012), No Comments »

But, ap­par­ently no-one mis­ses it! The “Allgarve” pro­gramme began in 2007, under the dir­ec­tion of the then Min­ister for the Economy Manuel Pinho. It re­ceived an­nual budgets to the tune of five mil­lion euros, but, said Cecília Meire­les, “it really […] »

Edition 714 ( 2 Feb 2012), No Comments »

Traf­fic on the Via do In­fante (A22) dropped by 48.1% in Decem­ber last year, com­pared to the same month in 2010. “Estra­das de Por­tugal” give “the eco­nomic situ­ation and the tolls” as the reas­ons for the dip. Ac­cord­ing to EP stat­ist­ics - which show […] »

Edition 714 ( 2 Feb 2012), No Comments »

The num­ber of fake euro coins in cir­cu­la­tion has dropped over the past year, but the €2 coin con­tin­ues to be the most no­tori­ous bogus coin – re­spons­ible for two thirds of the total num­ber of fals­i­fied coins de­tec­ted. In all 157.000 fake coins were […] »

Edition 714 ( 2 Feb 2012), No Comments »

So­ci­olo­gist Elí­sio Est­an­que has launched a book this week on the rise and fall of Por­tugal’s middle class. En­titled «A Classe Média: As­censão e De­clínio», it shows how “in just a few dec­ades” Por­tuguese so­ci­ety went from a pre­dom­in­antly rural one […] »

Edition 714 ( 2 Feb 2012), No Comments »

Fin­an­cial dif­fi­culties are pre­vent­ing hun­dreds of Por­tuguese fam­il­ies from cov­er­ing their mort­gage pay­ments. Emer­ging data shows that there has been an 18% in­crease in the num­ber of homes re­turned to banks by fam­il­ies and estate agents – while banks […] »

Edition 714 ( 2 Feb 2012), No Comments »