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Haven’t we got everything in Portugal that we need to live well? Good soil, enough water, lots of sunshine, and if you’ve got a good idea, meaningful work. It is harvest time again. The big fruits are hanging like heavy Easter eggs on the delicate trees in a one-hectare greenhouse in Fuseta, Olhão. Every year, 59-year-old José Lourenço, who was born in Mozambique, harvests around 20 tonnes of mangoes with names like Austin, Kate and Irwin. He supplies the Apolónia supermarkets in Almancil and Galé, as well as the Nosolo Italian ice cream parlours, Vila Vita and the local markets. …

Costa Vicentina is one of the few still wild and untamed Portuguese tourism zones. However, there has nevertheless been an exponential increase in tourist numbers in recent years. In order to bring about sustainable economic growth in the sector, Vicentina (1), in partnership with other regional associations, designed the ‘Nature Tourism Biennial’, held this year on September 26, 27 and 28 in the Aljezur multipurpose pavilion. According to the Vicentina Vice-President, Aura Fraga, “the event not only serves as a showcase of these tourism services to a mass public but also strives in parallel to demonstrate the potential of tourism …

‘Art on Chairs’ is an international event staged by Paredes Municipal Council and provides a unique set of experiences in the furniture industry to young Portuguese designers selected from across the country. In this second edition, deliberately more daring than the first (1) held in 2012, the surprising results of the competition for ‘More Industry, More Design’ artistic residences led to an expansion in the number of companies taking part in the council with the new total of 14 demonstrating the great commitment of the sector. The event organisers received a total of over 50 candidates and having delegated the …

The researcher Paula Banza is studying the importance of moths in the burnt areas of the eastern Algarve in order to deepen the relationship between the pollinators and plants in the regeneration of the vegetation in the destroyed areas. Since the spring of 2013, the first following the fires, she has been capturing insects on a regular basis in three areas where there were fires and three that were unaffected, in order to analyse possible differences in their behavioural patterns. In a laboratory, they are subjected to a process that allows the grains of pollen they are carrying to be …

To present the project for creating, developing and producing the eco-efficient window (EEW), ECO123 interviewed its creator, architect Miguel Veríssimo. ECO 123 – What led you to design this window?   Miguel Veríssimo – The EEW is a project dating from 2005/07. It arose from a practical need: a lack of eco-efficient building solutions on the market that could be mass produced, are easy to apply and are able to guarantee results when fitted in buildings. Once the idea was launched, I set up partnerships with the Physics and Technology of Buildings Laboratory at the University of Minho and with …

What you need to live is a good idea, a little bit of creativity together with an education, and a good helping of self-confidence. Take the same quantity of optimism, along with a sprinkling of realism. Don’t forget to shake well. Mix everything together well, examine it again in detail and critically, reflect on the whole thing and ask your friends for their advice and opinions. Then you’ll get quite a good product. A bit of start-up capital is also necessary, of course. You can get that from www.ppl.com.pt or ask Mum and Dad, your best friends or, when there’s …

The Portuguese oyster is that best appreciated by the French, the largest European consumers of this gastronomic speciality. However, because its development is slightly slower and smaller in size than its rivals, Portugal is now importing sprat Asian oysters from France and raising them along the Algarve coastline, where they are able to grow more rapidly before sending them back to their country of origin for consumption. And the local Portuguese oyster is steadily disappearing off the three still existing beds. Lisbon’s Márcia Santos and Madeira’s Maurício Namora, while students of Marine Biology at the University of the Algarve, decided …

We live in an era of entrepreneurship, a concept that means creating business opportunities (1). In this sense, if anyone deserves the title of entrepreneur, it is Andresa Salgueiro. She already had what most people are looking for at present: a stable, well-paid job, a house and a car, but she decided to swap everything – with the key word being “swap”. Until recently, Andresa was a training manager in five-star hotels. But on the day her marriage ended, in part because of disagreements relating to attitudes on sustainability, she gave up everything and decided to live off 1111€ for …

Sagres. After 15 years, the Forte de Beliche has, like Sleeping Beauty, been woken from its sleep. Once upon a time, guests could eat well and sleep here. But then the small, loss-making, 5-star pousada was closed by the state, given up, forgotten. In the mid-1990s, a landslip underneath the chapel of Henry the Navigator (1391-1460) triggered fears that the whole monument could slide into the sea. The work that is needed to make it geologically safe is today more a question of high architectural art, of the money needed to provide this and of political will. In the search …

The ceremony presenting the eCobus, organised by Salvador Caetano and Siemens Portugal, took place on 8th October at Inter Airport Europe (international trade fair for the airports sector) in Munich. Being presented as the first 100% electric airport bus, the eCobus is derived from the Cobus diesel vehicles produced by Caetano Bus (the factory of the Salvador Caetano group based in Gaia) to which electric motor conversion systems are applied, developed by Siemens Portugal. The project also involved the collaboration of the Institute of Mechanical Engineering and Industrial Management in the optimisation of each model. With an investment of one …