Portugal has been waiting for an answer from Spain for nine months
Portugal is still waiting on Spain in order to move forward with the construction of the long-planned bridge between the Algarve town of Alcoutim and the Spanish town of Sanlúcar de Guadiana.
Speaking to TSF radio, Alcoutim mayor Paulo Paulino said that Portugal has completed all the legal work needed to launch the tender for the bridge’s construction. But if Spain doesn’t do the same, the project will forever be doomed to remain in a state of limbo.
“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs sent this project to its Spanish counterpart, and we have been waiting for a response from Spain for a long time,” Paulino told TSF, saying that the waiting time has already reached nine months.
“So far, (a response) has not yet arrived, and that worries us,” the mayor says.
During his visit to Madrid in April, Portugal’s Prime Minister Luís Montenegro spoke of the importance of acting quickly to ensure that the project does not lose its funding via Portugal’s Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR). The project is expected to cost €13 million, but the funds must be ‘executed’ by June 2026, TSF highlights.
The issue on the Spanish side seems to be related to a disagreement over if it should be Spain’s central or regional government paying for the access routes to the bridge.
However, if this disagreement continues, the bridge – which Alcoutim believes would “bring more centrality” to the Algarve’s inland areas and is expected to reduce the travelling distance between the two towns by 70kms – will remain nothing more than an unfulfilled dream which was first discussed between the two countries during an Iberian summit in 1993.
