Home > Travel Writing > Lagos and (Praia da) Luz

‘Don’t be ashamed of your prosperity,’ said compere Derek Davis addressing the Irish in the audience at the Estrela da Luz resort in the western Algarve. ‘Think back to when we raised our children for export;’ some of the English laughed, not realising how literal this was.

Dublin airport, once associated with joyful Christmas reunions and painful farewells is now a thoroughfare for voluntary ex-pats and multiple-holiday-makers. While some go for the exotic and the unusual, many are looking for the familiar in a warmer climate. In the Algarve they find it.

Purpose-built tourist complexes have mushroomed there since the 1960s, when Faro airport first opened. The year-round sunshine, world-class beaches and golf courses assured the popularity of places like Albufeira. They quickly reached saturation point, though construction continues.

“Until the 1970s, we did not have compulsory education in the Algarve,” said a spokesman for the Algarve tourist board. “Not every home had electricity and running water. Since then there has been much development. We may have lost some features that were special to the region, but the way of life now is much better. People from different parts of Portugal and other countries come not only to visit but to live here.”

The number of foreign six-year-olds in a primary class in Tavira is reported in a local paper. There are Chinese, Poles, Germans, English. The school has 15 nationalities altogether. The diversity is celebrated, though initial language problems are acknowledged. ‘The children act as interpreters for their parents,’ says the teacher pictured with her cosmopolitan class.

In the western Algarve, development was slower to take off. Then, three years ago, the A22 motorway reduced a journey of several hours to 45 minutes and the area around Lagos, the ancient capital of Portugal, was ripe for conquest.

The place I am staying is in Praia da Luz (beach of light), recently upgraded to a town and renamed Vila da Luz. The influx is from northern Europe and the lingua franca is English.

Following Derek Davis’s act, Irish dancers clattered across the stage, smiles fixed. The owner of the resort joined the Three Irish Tenors for their encore. I spotted a fellow Dublin journalist on another table, who owns an apartment here. The Irish football team might use the complex as a base for its training, rumour has it.

What I knew, and liked, about Portugal was gleaned from a week driving round the Minho region in the north and from a few days in Lisbon and Oporto. This wasn’t it.

Next morning, emerging from the comfort of my four-star apartment and the luxury of a massage and facial I was more mellow. I was so relaxed my face looked botoxed. I’d had a swim and a sauna and admired the stamina of those, young and old, whirring away in the gym.

Walking down to the beach, I wondered how long it would be before the remaining grass was covered in more white villas. But I was wrong. The coastal area here is protected and development must abide by certain rules. In Luz, according to Winkworth’s estate agents, there is actually no more room to develop. Oceanico, who own Estrela da Luz, are building a big complex at the other end of the town, but after that, they will look elsewhere.

Lagos, a ten-minute drive away, is bigger than Luz and has more of a Portuguese infrastructure, with several outstanding churches and the remains of medieval town walls. The earthquake of 1755, which destroyed Lisbon, had its epicentre just south of here. The Igreja de Santo Antonio, with its madly over-the-top gilt and carved interior, and the museum next door are among the few buildings to have survived the earthquake.

A new marina echoes Lagos’s glory days as the starting point for Portugal’s voyages of discovery in the 15th century, and is still important as the first port of call after the Atlantic Ocean.

Founded by the Phoenicians, Lagos became an important trading town under the Moors before the re-conquest by Christian armies in 1241. Henry the Navigator used Lagos as a base for African trade and the remains of the first slave market in Europe can be found alongside the old custom house.

The statue in the main square is comically ugly and depicts the youthful king Dom Sebastiao looking as if he’s wearing a carpet on his head. He led a disastrous expedition against the Moors in Morocco in 1578 and died together with most of the Portuguese nobility, enabling Spain to annex Portugal for 60 years.

White storks have built their nests in tall brick chimneys around the town, which cannot, because of the bird’s status, be pulled down. The pedestrianised streets of the town centre make for pleasant strolls and are lively in the evenings, with some excellent restaurants. Here, unlike many towns along the Algarve coast, local tastes prevail and I only spotted one burger joint.

Lagos has a couple of decent ‘pensaos’ for those who are not in the luxury apartment market.

Some of the Algarve’s best beaches lie around Lagos, and the coast here is called the Costa d’Oiro, or gold coast. Meia Praia is a sweeping four kilometres long. Camper vans enjoy uninterrupted ocean views along this stretch. I spoke to an English woman who lived in a 28ft luxury motor home. Having initially bought a smaller camper van in order to look for an apartment in the Algarve, she decided that she didn’t really need an apartment after all and went for a bigger van. Her neighbour was a German toy-maker living in a makeshift caravan pulled by a tractor.

On the bus back to Luz, I saw a bit of the green hinterland and realised how little tourism encroached away from the coast, with the Monchique hills offering an almost total respite. I never count myself as a tourist. Just as traffic is always other cars, so tourists are always other people.

Portuguese courtesy prevails everywhere. Most people have some knowledge of English and are gracious under the foreign onslaught. I looked kindly on Luz as I walked back to the apartments. Although tourism plays a large part in the local economy, there are few high rises here and just one hotel on the outskirts. Gardens are well tended, and wild flowers sprout where given a chance. Almond blossom and lemon trees remind you that you are indeed far from home.

As I waited for my taxi back to the airport after a short but relaxing break, I watched a Portuguese man tending cabbages on a small plot opposite the complex, while hens clucked around him, oblivious of any change.

Read more travel writing by Maxine Jones