Rui André, mayor of Monchique

Depopulation is a problem that I would say is a national one; there has been an imbalance in the country in terms of the movement of people who seek out the cities and, as a result of this, the interior has become depopulated, as in the example of Monchique.

The truth is that people have abandoned the countryside for the cities because they started to look for places where there was employment, and most employment is still in the cities.

Today, people have a different view of these matters: special attention is being paid to living in rural areas, to living in forested areas, associated with other aspects not only to do with the question of employment but specifically with quality of life.

Apart from employment, quality of life can be found in places that offer security, that offer quality of services, where costs are low for the services that families need either directly or indirectly. There are a number of factors that people pay attention to when looking for a place to live and not for actual employment.

The people who went away, who went in search of work many years ago, many of them will doubtless never return. What is happening is that people who are considering going to live in the cities, think twice.

People have started to do their sums. In other words, how much will they have to spend in a city? How much do I spend in direct taxes, IMI (property rates), income tax? How much do I pay for water? And condominium charges? If you have a child, how much does it cost to send your child to a crèche? It amounts to about 300/350 euros. And then they think, how much do I have to pay for all this if I live in Monchique?

The truth is that, if we do our sums, it is much cheaper in Monchique. Why? For example, the municipal crèche we have covers 100% of the infant population and costs 80 euros, despite the fact that it costs the municipality around 350 euros. We bear the cost of all the rest and only charge people 80 euros.

We have a huge, high quality range of services that provides assistance to people in various ways, which means that people check what life will cost.

Maybe it would be better to live in Monchique and travel to Portimão every day, and what is spent on transport, on fuel, is certainly less than if you went to Portimão to live.

What needs to be done is to continue doing what we have done so far and make the area attractive for people, creating the conditions for people to have quality of life, to settle here and to be given a little help with their most basic concerns.

We have consolidated our support network and we now need to move on to the second phase of job creation. I think that the days are numbered for depopulation in Monchique, great efforts are being made to counteract this natural movement!