Comprising 170 rooms, 86 of which are suites (21 junior suites, 21 side-view suites and 44 sea-view suites) the hotel is hoped to be officially inaugurated by Prime Minister José Sócrates and State Secretary for Tourism Bernardo Trindade.
Vila Galé Lagos is a project that was long in the planning but which was only given the go-ahead in 2007 when the Government approved a new Urban Plan (PU) for Meia Praia and which for the first time allowed the construction of four and five star hotels in that area.
It was a change that pleased Lagos Mayor Júlio Barroso, who said it represented the end of a “long process and the beginning of a good, new phase”.
Along with Vila Galé Lagos, there are another four large tourist units in the pipeline, namely the five-star Ibero Hotel, as well as the upgrading of the existing hotel on Meia Praia which belongs to the Palmares group.
However, the first generation of Meia Praia residents who made up the original dwellers of the ‘historical’ village have said they will stay and fight for their right to live on legally-purchased plots.
Dozens of fishermen and their families have lived in makeshift ‘villages’ on Meia Praia since the 1950s. Over the years those inhabitants have become known locally as the ‘Meia Praia Indians’ and even had a song by a famous Portuguese musician penned about them.
Initially the dwellings were made from thatching and later reinforced with brick using local government funding after the revolution on April 25th, 1974.
However, in July 2007 Lagos Mayor Barroso publicly spoke out against the dwellings, describing them as “degraded” and saying he believed the inhabitants “understood that the neighborhood was not compatible with five star hotels”.
