After many years with no such facilities, Lagos Municipal Council has finally succeeded in fulfilling an old dream: the construction of the municipal swimming pools, which opened last weekend. At a cost of over 12 million euros, the project dates back to 2001 and was co-financed by European funds. It will serve a municipality that has 30,000 residents, about half of whom live in the city of Lagos itself, according to the most recent census.

From next Sunday, there will be direct trains with Portuguese railways from Porto to Faro which will take six hours, and will stop in Aveiro, Coimbra, Gare do Oriente (Lisbon), Pinhal Novo (Palmela) and Tunes. There will be two trains daily in each direction with an increase in the number of Alfa Pendular trains. There will be four services in total, two in each direction.

A completely innovative system on an international level is being put in place by Algar. The Algarve company responsible for collecting solid urban waste has put its faith in information technology in order to do away with paper and make the process of rubbish collection more efficient. Until 2004, bureaucracy was one of the system’s weak points. Each time a truck left or arrived, they had to write a report on paper with the weight of each container of glass, paper and packaging, which was then sent for recycling.

Portugal's first ever Hilton hotel, As Cascadas Resort and Spa, is due to open in Vilamoura this July. Ian Waremouth, from International Operations at the Hilton Hotels Corporation in the UK, confirmed the date. The resort is spread across an area of 40,000sqm and located between the Old Course and Pinhal. There will be a five star hotel with 154 rooms and 69 timeshare apartments on the premises. There will also be 69 luxury apartments, which, according to Hilton International, have already been sold.

The linking of the sixteen Algarve municipalities by means of a broadband fibre optic network is to be postponed once again. The project, organised by Globalgarve, had applied for funding from the “Knowledge Society Operational Programme” and ended up in seventh place out of eight proposals. But the Programme only approved four of the eight applications, leaving out the Globalgarve project.

The Algarve Promotion Board (ATA) will be attending the main tourism fairs which are taking place during the month of April. From 17th to 19th April, the Algarve will be present at IMEX in Frankfurt, the key fair for the congress and incentive tourism segment, which is aimed at professionals in the sector.