A crematorium has been added to the plan to build a new municipal cemetery in Sítio do Malheiro on the outskirts of Portimão. The announcement was made by the local council on Thursday (July 16).
The project to build a new badly-needed cemetery in Portimão has been in the pipeline for years but has yet to get off the drawing board, although the announcement provides some hope that this may finally be changing.
Says the council, it has launched two tenders – one to find a company to draw up the new cemetery’s “global project” and another to find a company to manage and build the crematorium.
The plan is to build the cemetery on a 47,000sqm council-owned plot of land and provide an alternative to the town’s only other cemetery, which dates back to the 19th century and is located right in the heart of the town, making any kind of expansion works impossible.
The crematorium is the latest addition to the plan. As the council points out, cremation offers benefits namely from a “sanitary point of view”.
The company that wins the tender for the construction and management of the crematorium will be in charge of paying for all construction costs and studies, as well as all maintenance charges, the council stressed. The concession contract will be for 30 years, it added.
However, the council has so far refused to commit to any dates, meaning it is still anyone’s guess when all these plans will be seen through.
If the project does indeed move forward, Portimão will become the third town in the Algarve to boast a crematorium.
The Algarve’s first crematorium opened in Albufeira in March (click here), while Faro’s is expected to open for business in September.
Before the crematorium in Albufeira opened, the closest crematorium to the Algarve was located in Ferreira do Alentejo in Beja, around 150kms away from Albufeira. It only conducted one cremation per day, forcing Algarve funeral agencies to travel all the way to Setúbal near Lisbon.
