Golf in Portugal
Translated by AI
Mountains in the north, fairly rainy and cool. Sandy beaches in the south, fairly dry with a Mediterranean climate. That is Portugal, the most tourist-dense country in Europe.
About eleven million people live here. Every year they look after more than twelve million tourists. That’s more than one tourist per inhabitant. Subtract all the children and retirees, and the pressure on the rest of the population becomes downright enormous. Highly unscientifically, you might guess this is the largest concentration of tourists per capita in all of Europe.
Portugal was once a great power with colonies here and there. The country’s fleet of merchant ships and pirate ships darted back and forth across the seven seas, doing business, plundering and bringing huge treasures home to the king. A couple of hundred years have passed since then. Portugal has endured world wars, dictatorship and, after the 1974 revolution, an increasingly stable democracy. But the treasure chest is empty, and at the very bottom lie mostly IOUs from the IMF and the World Bank.
So this is a country that had been leaving illiteracy, high child mortality and poverty behind, but is now down on its luck again with huge debts. Unemployment is rising alarmingly fast, ordinary citizens have run out of money, and the pressure on the state to do something radical grows every year. The income gap between the richest and the poorest is the highest in the EU, a powder keg when hunger replaces well-being.
Misery upon misery, in other words? Well, not quite. There is another side of the coin (for those who still have any left…): tourism. While politicians and officials wrestle with their worries in the capital, Lisbon, other parts of the country are investing in all kinds of ways to look after the ever-growing stream of tourists.
Besides the golf, which in our case is the main thing, there is fantastic accommodation in historic settings, Portuguese cooking that may not have conquered the world but is very good (try the fish!!), hiking in some of Europe’s most beautiful mountains, an enormous Atlantic coastline with white beaches, and so on.
If you really want to warm up in a pleasant climate, the Algarve is perfect. It is the country’s southernmost province, with a very long, curving coastline facing the Atlantic. It has more sunny days a year than California, and the most wonderful little towns, restaurants and places to stay.
The Algarve is still relatively inexpensive. Food, drink and accommodation are all of high quality at low prices. In the high season, April to October, there are plenty of direct flights from northern Europe to Faro, the “capital” of the Algarve, and in winter you fly into Lisbon, about three hours by car from the Algarve.
Looking at the golf alone, some 60 new courses are currently being planned in the Algarve. That is an addition that will make the nearby Spanish golf resorts tremble. The Algarve already has an enormous number of courses. Quality varies, but with the natural conditions found throughout the Algarve, it is hard to build a bad course. That’s just how it is.
This article by Bo Sjosten was originally published in Swedish on our sister site Golfjournalen.se. It has been translated by AI.
