Albufeira council is forging ahead with “surreal” demolition plans that have shocked a neighbourhood.
Refusing every single attempt at contact by the Resident, the council has applied for technical advice from the national laboratory of civil engineering while inviting tenders from demolition companies for the best offer in an exercise that will leave little change from €500,000.
As explained earlier this month, Loulé’s administrative court is insisting on the demolition of an entire block of flats built over a decade ago in Olhos de Água, as well as the removal of the top floor of another.
At stake are homes bought legally and in good faith by scores of families oblivious to the legal nightmare they were walking into.
As PS Socialist councillors have guaranteed, the council should be doing everything in its power to help the 66 residents involved.
Instead, it appears to be toeing the line and refusing doggedly to talk to the local press.
As we reported recently, residents have banded together and vow to slap Albufeira council with a €5 million legal suit that will leave it in tatters.
“You cannot imagine what that will mean to Albufeira,” leading campaigner Rui Santos told us. “It would affect every single council service, and the people ‘paying’ in the end would, of course, be every citizen in the borough”.
As we explained in our lead story at the beginning of August (see Demolition shock rocks Albufeira apartments), the “illegality” of the apartments in question was sanctioned by former mayor, now head of Algarve tourism, Desidério Silva.
