Nazare, Leiria, Portugal, Aug. 13, 2025 (Lusa) - The Nazaré town council, on Portugal's centre region Atlantic coast, is investigating the possibility of sabotage in the sewage system after the situation that closed the beach to bathing, but recognises the need for urgent investment in a system that is around 60 years old.
"At this moment, I am not ruling out [the possibility of sabotage], because we have a number of factors that we are going to analyse and then decide whether there are grounds to take this further," the mayor of Nazaré, Manuel Sequeira (PS), told the Lusa news agency on Wednesday, following the blockage of the sewage pipe that led to the closure of the northern part of Nazaré beach on Tuesday.
"We are gathering information and trying to understand what is happening," said the mayor of this district in the region of Leiria, acknowledging that "there are many strange things going on: it is a fact that many people know the system very well, perhaps some better than us, and it is a fact that we are experiencing something that is not normal."
The problem is a blockage in the sewage pipe near Praça Manuel Arriaga, which caused effluent to leak for about an hour and a half, leading to a ban on bathing at the beach as a preventive measure.
The mayor acknowledged to the Lusa news agency, however, the need for ‘a major investment in the pipes, which are over 50 or 60 years old’ and unable to cope with the "heavy tourist pressure" that Nazaré faces at this time of year.
According to Manuel Sequeira, the situation is aggravated by the incorrect actions of some people, "because it is not normal to remove kitchen cloths, mops, towels" and other materials that cause blockages from those pipes.
The pipe is currently being cleaned, but "the problem is very difficult to solve without a major investment", which has already been made in the southern part of the system and "has been postponed in the northern part, where there was a similar case in 2020", during which, for example, "a beach towel" was removed from the pipe.
This is the second time the beach has been closed to bathing since the beginning of the month, after bathing was banned on 1 August due to a discharge into the storm drains. Following that incident, 116 people were treated at the Local Health Unit (ULS) in the Leiria region with symptoms related to water contamination.
This time, "there are no reports of people with symptoms, nor should there be, because the discharge was quickly detected," explained the mayor, who expects to have the results of the analyses requested from the Dr. Ricardo Jorge National Health Institute by the end of today.
In a statement, the Left Bloc (BE) warned, however, that "according to information gathered locally, there are reports of people who needed hospital assistance".
Lusa questioned the Leiria Local Health Unit about requests for assistance related to this incident, but has not yet received a response.
These incidents confirm "that the old sewage pipe, whose connection to the sewage network should have been disconnected several years ago, is still operational", which the Left Bloc considers "intolerable and a risk not only to public health but also to the local economy, which is heavily dependent on beach tourism".
In its statement, the Bloc demands "the immediate and definitive closure of the old pipe near the corner of the rocks, the urgent and safe adaptation of the Nazaré sewage system to ensure that situations of this kind do not recur, and the public disclosure, with complete transparency, of water quality analyses and corrective measures underway".
"The safety of the public and visitors must always be above any other consideration," concludes the Bloc, arguing that Nazaré "cannot allow serious failures in the sanitation network to compromise people's health and the image of (...) the land as a tourist destination of excellence".
DA/AYLS // AYLS
Lusa
