Silves fair shame

By NATASHA DONN news@algarveresident.com

A shameful display of political posturing has rocked a 100-year- old fair in the Algarve.

The bustling three-day fair that would normally start on All Saints Day and carries on through the weekend, will now be a shadow of its former self, and it’s all down to sour grapes among politicians at the Town Hall. Five days into their new mandate, the incoming CDU administration had tried to save the day by giving the fair ‘tax exemption’ status. But PS and PSD politicians banded together in a veto that has left everyone the losers.

“It’s all political,” a visibly upset Mayoress Rosa Palma admitted. “To be honest, I have hardly slept since Friday” when her party’s proposal to create a ‘tax-free fair’ (Feira Franca) was vetoed by the opposition.

Palma was talking at a last-minute meeting with fairground personnel on Tuesday this week, trying to reach some sort of consensus.

But the bottom line is that fairground charges in Silves have become exorbitant.

“Não há feira! (there won’t be a fair)” Joaquim Garcia, president of the fairground workers’ association pronounced after the meeting. He then strode outside to break the news to waiting throngs.

Joaquim Garcia, president of the fairground workers’ association, speaking to upset vendors outside the town hall building.

The issue centres on changes to fairground charges made by the last PSD administration, under Rogério Pinto.

“To give an example, a little patch of ground that used to cost €81 for someone selling ‘farturas’ (a form of fried doughnut) now costs €325,” Palma told the Algarve Resident. “And that’s without the Town Hall offering any kind of services. It is just too much.”

Rosa Palma was the only CDU member on the council when the new charges were introduced, and she voted against them. PS councillors, however, all abstained.

“If they had voted against, we wouldn’t be in the situation we are today,” Palma explained.

PS councillors had a second chance to act last Friday – by supporting Palma’s suggestion for a Feira Franca – but this time they chose to support the PSD, almost certainly because both major parties are peeved that the CDU (communist/ green party alliance) pipped them to the post of power.

“It is precisely because of situations like these that I stood in the last elections,” Palma, 41, told the Algarve Resident. “It is time Silves was led by politicians who actually put people first and have no time for political posturing.”

Now Palma’s administration hopes to work with fairground personnel and come up with a new set of rules for fairgrounds which can be passed in good time to allow the traditional fair to go ahead in all its glory once again next year.

“I can’t believe this has happened,” said Palma. “If I could do anything to change the situation, believe me, I would.

“This fair is a special tradition in Silves and it is a huge shame that politics has got in the way and ruined it for everyone.”