The first scheduled flight on the Bragança to Portimão air route arrived at Alvor municipal aerodrome in the Algarve this morning, one hour late.
The AeroVip 18-seater landed with the company boss at the controls. Pedro Leal safely landed the Dornier with his three passengers, a mother and two children.
Rival leaders have begun meeting to assess any potential for building a coalition government in Spain after its fragmented election results.
PM Mariano Rajoy and the Socialist party leader Pedro Sánchez met for 40 minutes on Wednesday. Sánchez later said that little had changed.
Portugal's Court of Auditors has detected hundreds of cases where the monthly pensions have been paid to beneficiaries that have been unable to use the money as they are dead.
Some cases have been unearthed where the Ministry of Justice has failed to inform the Social Security department until ten years after the pensioner had died.
Portugal’s failed lender Banif snapped up by Santander - Portugal’s central bank announced on Sunday 20 December, that Banco Internacional do Funchal, or Banif, will be split into a ‘good’ and a ‘bad’ bank, with the good assets being sold to Spain’s Santander.
Small Portuguese lender Banco Internacional do Funchal SA will be broken up and mostly sold to Spain’s Santander SA, while receiving a large capital injection from the government.
At the start of what is being hailed as “a new era” in Spanish politics, there is no clear indication as to who is going to be running the country, but a left-wing arrangement similar to that in Portugal is one of the strongest possibilities.
Given that none of the four major parties emerged from last Sunday’s general election with anything close to a majority of seats in the legislature, the most rational coalition might be between Spain’s two most established rivals, the centre-right Popular Party (PP) and the centre-left Socialists.
Olhão’s mayor has launched a tender for the construction of a 4-star aparthotel and luxury apartments in land next to the Real Marina Hotel (pictured) which neighbours several blocs of unoccupied, luxury apartments.
The original plan for green space next to the hotel is long forgotten, overtaken by a thrust to attract more high rollers to this most Portuguese of seafront cities.
“Banif is a shocking subject and has to be explained," commented António Horta Osório, the head of Lloyds Bank.
The Portuguese banker, head of the Lloyds Banking Group, said that an external audit is needed if Banif is having an injection of €3 billion, a value "too high to not have a very clear calculation of liabilities."
The taxpayer funded air-link between the north and the south of Portugal starts on Wednesday, December 23rd with an inaugural flight from Bragança to Vila Real, Viseu and Cascais before landing at Alvor, Portimão at 10:05 to a reception of press and local bigwigs.
Portimão taxpayers have paid to upgrade the aerodrome reception building and the council has ensured that all the correct safety precautions are in place.
