Vehicles will have assigned parking locations to avoid informal concentrations throughout the municipality.

Faro’s new municipal regulation for caravans and motorhomes was approved at a Municipal Assembly meeting on July 5. The document was prepared “to regulate the activity and avoid the so-called informal concentrations of these vehicles, which occur a little throughout the municipality, bringing certain negative effects,” explained the municipality in a press release.

These negative effects result from the use of unhabitable and environmentally unsustainable vehicles, which do not guarantee basic hygiene conditions and cause damage related to basic sanitation.

Further adverse effects result from “vehicles that do not present safety conditions (as is the case of some illegally transformed or degraded vehicles), or that remain for long periods in the same places, contributing to the degradation of public equipment, such as taps and bathrooms”.

Thus, from now on, this activity will have assigned locations. “Currently, there is the Praia de Faro Camping Park. However, the municipality may license other spaces, including service areas for motorhomes (where vehicles can remain for a maximum of 72 hours to carry for cleaning and maintenance activities)”, says the municipality.

Rules of conduct are also established for motorhome owners and those who oversee the service areas. For example, an Internal Regulation is now mandatory in these locations. They will be subject “to inspection by the administrative and police authorities, including the municipality itself, through its competent services and, consequently, to the imposition of fines, in case of non-compliance.”

Caravaners, on the other hand, must comply with “the precepts of hygiene, refrain from any acts likely to disturb others, and from lighting a fire, except when equipment is used for cooking food authorised for that purpose, among other rules”.

By establishing the main concepts related to this activity, namely what is meant by “overnight stay and parking” and defining the conditions under which they are allowed, the municipality considers this instrument as “fundamental to manage the territory and in the framework of the activity. Especially considering that this practice represents an important tourism segment, helping to boost the local economy, mitigating asymmetries and isolation in the interior”.

Therefore, “conditions to integrate caravan and motorhome lovers into the urban and rural fabric, preserving the environment and providing accommodation for all, at the same time as projecting a positive image of the municipality will be guaranteed”, concludes the note.