Portugal 2026 - part two

According to one study, in the 1930s less than 40,000 tourists were visiting Portugal yearly compared to more than five million travelling to better-known resorts in Italy.

Travellers to Portugal were largely upper middle and upper class gravitating to a - since the 19th century - highly fashionable resort, Estoril, on the Atlantic just west of Lisbon.

This is Estoril, which I’ll be visiting later in the trip.

Declared Portugal’s dictator António Salazar, ‘We should not want foreigners to visit en masse’ … 

… and he meant it.

In the late 1950s, British writer Frank Huggett arrived in Albufeira and ‘within an hour, I had rented (a house) for a pound a week, and within two hours I was drunk and singing merrily - for that is how the initial hours in any small Portuguese town are apt to be for foreign visitors, each being received as if he were the first’. (South of Lisbon)

Albufeira was an impoverished fishing town.

But by the 1960s, although Salazar was still in power, Portugal, one of Europe’s poorest countries, needed money. And so, in hopes of attracting limited, thoroughly respectable, middle class tourism, the go-ahead was given for something of an experiment, a modern hotel overlooking Albufeira’s beach. 

The 1965 Hotel Sol e Mar - you can see its curve top centre - was built directly below a church whose tower was - and is - the town landmark. The fifty-room hotel was set into the cliff so it couldn’t be seen from the village.

And look who came … 

… and a lot more besides.

Sixty years later, the Hotel Sol e Mar is a modernist gem, an architectural time capsule.

A stylish round bar with overhead coloured glass where I enjoyed drinks with other Canadians …

… and dance floor that fortunately didn’t witness my rare pathetic efforts.

Recessed lighting …

… and period art.

Those who enjoy mid-century modern can find other occasional Albufeira examples ‘mid the horrors that have also appeared.

Some rather nice curved balconies …

… and the 60s, early 70s, entrance to the Hotel Brisa Sol …

… which also features a prominent neon sign.

However, one of quirkiest buildings I’ve ever seen is Albufeira’s 1986 city council building …

… that, to be fair, does flaunt a Guinness World Record achieved many years ago.

Finally, the early 2000s Albufeira marina, a complex unsurprisingly compared to Lego blocks.