The Algarve’s infamous EN125 road – known for its alarming number of car accidents – has also been flagged as “unsafe for cyclists or pedestrians”.

The 28-year-old British mum reported missing last week from Boliqueime with her children by their apparently distraught father has ‘set the record straight’, cataloguing what she claims have been ‘years of abuse’.

Christine Davies told the Resident this week that she snapped after partner Aaron Rodwell allegedly threatened to smother the couple’s baby with a pillow.

“That moment I knew ‘when he goes out tomorrow, we’re gone’,” she told us. “I put up with his abuse, God knows why, but I will not allow anyone to hurt my children.

A 26 year-old Portuguese man, who has not been named, was arrested last week after a 5-star hotel in the tourist centre of the Catalan capital reported that he left without paying a bill of around €1,000. It emerged that he had, in fact, stayed at a total of 14 hotels in Barcelona, running up bills totalling €7,525.44.

In another black week for Novo Banco - the so-called “good bank” that Portugal desperately needs to sell - media reports have exposed a catastrophic ‘mistake’ that saw thousands of euros transferred erroneously to former clients; news that the bank “stands to lose 838 million euros in Angola” and a censure by the IMF on the way the bank’s accounts were made to look ‘better’ by retroactively dumping €2 billion-worth of senior bonds.

With no news on any ‘firmly-committed prospective buyers’ in sight, the first three days of the week could hardly have looked worse.

Then came more bad news.

Fifteen service chiefs with CP - Comboios de Portugal have been exposed for receiving between 1000 and 2000 euros in pay rises, just when the 2016 State Budget stated “there is no room for management bonuses, and pay rises in public businesses are prohibited”.

To make matters worse, the railway authority registered losses of 159,000 euros in its most recently published set of accounts (referring to 2014).

Algarve retailers association ACRAL has finally dropped the injunction it had against IKEA’s mega shopping complex in Loulé, saying it is ‘time to turn a threat into an opportunity’.

With the massive project now underway, ACRAL’s new president Álvaro Viegas is trying a new tack.

To combat tax evasion, 55 countries - including Portugal - are going to start sharing information from 2017. Another 43 countries will join the list a year later.

Bit by bit, the fallout from the Panama Papers is changing the goalposts for the rich, famous and infamous.

Tortuous post-mortem inquiries into the catastrophic Banif ‘resolution’, have seen left wingers round on central bank governor Carlos Costa, with the official government line being that he is guilty of a “serious lack of information”.

Fresh from a six-hour ‘explanation’ given to the parliamentary inquiry into the bank’s collapse, Costa has always maintained that he bears no responsibility for the collapse of the fourth financial institution under his regulatory eye in the space of less than six years.