The recently buoyant Spanish economy has begun to slow down.

The economy had been expanding for nine quarters in a row, making the eurozone’s fourth largest economy into one of its fastest growing.

In a breakthrough announcement, Loulé Council is to reduce property taxes in 2016, thus fulfilling an election promise from 2013.

According to today’s welcome news, "after two years in which the budget basically went through financial consolidation, the municipality is currently in a position to lower taxes, a situation now possible because the municipality of Loulé paid its 2012 Programme to Support Local Economy loan at the end of 2014.”

GNR personnel will be on ‘intensified road patrol duty’ this coming weekend in an operation designed to coincide with the rise in traffic due to the annual Dia dos Mortos (Day of the Dead.)

The kind thoughts expressed in the statement from the GNR’s National Traffic Unit belie the rapacious intent to rake in money from as many fines as possible.

The head of Portugal’s French-owned airports operator said the number of passengers through Portugal's airports should increase by over 10% this year.

The president of Aeroportos de Portugal, Jorge Ponce de León, said that he thought last year’s 9.5% increase would be unbeatable but is going for double figures this year.

A toker's dream washed up on the beach at Vila Real de Santo António on Monday as a package containing 20 blocs of hashish was spotted by an early moring walker and reported to the police.

The former Secretary of State for Transport and Communications, Sérgio Monteiro, is to be hired by the Resolution Fund to front a new sale process for Novo Banco.

Monteiro’s hiring results from a need expressed by the Bank of Portugal and Novo Banco to have someone exclusively running the sale, as those who had been in charge ‘have other functions in regulating the financial sector.’

The government has altered the agreement for the sale of state airline TAP including a clause that, if triggered, forces the taxpayer again to underwrite losses if the airline continues to be run at a loss.

The banks exposed to TAP are BCP, Deutsche Bank, BIC, CGD and BPI, which petitioned for a new lending guarantee clause. The government agreed in order to unblock negotiations.

State standards authority ASAE says its officers have been cleaning up Portugal’s wine sector with 221 criminal cases pursued in the last decade

Food Safety and Economic Authority inspectors have checked 3,800 wine businesses, seized 7.4 million litres of wine and filed 221 criminal cases in the wine industry.