The mayor of Lisbon, Carlos Moedas (PSD), today accused the PS of “blocking” the requalification of Tapada das Necessidades, including the revocation of a contract signed by the previous executive, but the socialists assure that it is “grotesquely false”.
“The PS has once again blocked a proposal that solved a problem created by the PS itself. Unfortunately, the proposal to redevelop Tapada das Necessidades was not voted on today because the PS blocked it,” said Carlos Moedas, in a post on the social network X (formerly Twitter), after the discussion was postponed at a private meeting of the municipal executive.
The PS council refused to accept responsibility for the postponement of the vote on the Tapada das Necessidades proposals: “Grotesquely false. The meeting was suspended by Carlos Moedas and the PS made it clear that it would vote in favor of the requalification of the Tapada.”
“It is more difficult to accept, as Carlos Moedas wanted, refusing a request for compensation of 1.1 million euros in order to send it to arbitration with a base value of 3.6 million,” the PS pointed out.
At issue is the revocation of the contract signed between the municipality of Lisbon and the commercial company Banana Café Emporium, in July 2016, relating to the “Concession for the private use of a group of existing buildings in Tapada das Necessidades in Lisbon, for a period of 20 years, non-extendable”, as it is incompatible with the objectives of the Plan for the Safeguarding and Management of the Royal Quinta das Necessidades (PSGRQN).
In 2021, the municipality suspended the implementation of this concession, conditioning its possible continuation on the development and approval of a plan to safeguard Tapada das Necessidades.
The decision followed a public petition promoted by the “Friends of Tapada das Necessidades” group, which collected around 12,000 signatures, and in 2021 led to the drawing up of the “Preliminary Plan phase of the Safeguarding Plan, which was followed by a participatory and fruitful public consultation, which received contributions from the population and various entities, as well as a favorable opinion from the Directorate-General for Cultural Heritage”.
In this context, Banana Café claimed compensation from the municipality for damages arising from the revocation of the concession contract, amounting to 295,426.27 euros, and the sum of 3,322,829 euros as lost profits.
The PCP suggested deleting the indication of recourse to an Arbitration Court, leaving only the idea that the losses invoked by the concessionaire as a result of this revocation should be the subject of an opinion from the legal department, in order to assess the existence or not of lost profits.
Alongside this proposal, the council also planned to discuss the project to rehabilitate and boost Tapada das Necessidades for the period 2024-2027, which involves an investment of 19.26 million euros, financed through the Tourism Development Fund.
“In recent decades, urban tourism has grown the most, accompanied by greater competition between cities and the intervention in Tapada das Necessidades will contribute to diversifying the offer in the city of Lisbon,” reads the proposal signed by the deputy mayor, Filipe Anacoreta Correia (CDS-PP), who is responsible for Finance, and the councillor for the Economy, Diogo Moura (CDS-PP).
Also known as Quinta Real das Necessidades, Tapada das Necessidades is a historic garden with an area of around 10 hectares, in the parish of Estrela, “with great heritage and cultural importance for the city of Lisbon and for all those who visit the Portuguese capital”, says the council, noting that the space is “quite run-down and in need of extensive rehabilitation”.
