If bill is signed into law, Portugal would join several European countries which already have full or partial bans.
Published On 17 Oct 202517 Oct 2025
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Portugal has approved a bill to ban face veils used for “gender or religious motives” in most public spaces that was proposed by the far-right Chega party and targets burqas and niqabs worn by Muslim women.
Under the bill, approved by parliament on Friday, proposed fines for wearing face veils in public would range from 200 to 4,000 euros ($234-$4,670). Forcing someone to wear one would be punishable with prison terms of up to three years.
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Face veils would still be allowed in aeroplanes, diplomatic premises and places of worship.
According to local media reports, the bill is now set to be discussed in the parliamentary committee on Constitutional Affairs, Rights, Freedoms, and Guarantees – a body responsible for reviewing legislation related to constitutional matters.
If signed into law, it would put Portugal alongside European countries, including France, Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands, which already have full or partial bans.
President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa could still veto the bill or send it to the Constitutional Court for checks.
During Friday’s parliamentary session, Chega leader Andre Ventura was confronted by several female lawmakers from left-wing parties who opposed the bill, but it passed with support from the centre-right coalition.
“We are today protecting female members of parliament, your daughters, our daughters, from having to use burqas in this country one day,” Ventura said.
In a post on X, he wrote: “Today is a historic day for our democracy and for the safeguarding of our values, our identity and women’s rights.”
Andreia Neto, a lawmaker from the ruling Social Democratic Party, said before the vote: “This is a debate on equality between men and women. No woman should be forced to veil her face.”
Two out of the 10 parties in parliament abstained from the vote – the People-Animals-Nature party, and the Together for the People party, according to local media reports.
The parties have suggested that the proposal incited discrimination.
Only a small minority of Muslim women in Europe cover their faces, and in Portugal such veils are very rare.
But full-face coverings such as niqabs and burqas have become a polarising issue across Europe, with some arguing that they symbolise gender discrimination or can represent a security threat and should be outlawed.
Twisting along roads flanked by cherry trees, granite boulders, vines and wildflower-flecked pastures, I wind down the windows and breathe in the pure air of Portugal’s remote, historic Beira Interior region. The motor is silent, the playlist is birdsong and occasional bleating sheep; all is serene. “This is easier,” I say to myself with a smile, recalling my previous attempt to visit the Aldeias Históricas – a dozen historic hamlets bound by a 1995 conservation project – using woeful public transport. Revisiting this unspoilt pocket of Portugal, 155 miles (250km) north-east of Lisbon, near the border with Spain, is going to be effortless in an EV. And, best of all, the transport doesn’t cost me a penny.
An hour before, I arrived in Castelo Novo, a four-hour train ride from the capital, and currently the sole hub of the Aldeias Históricas’s Sustainable Urban Mobility Scheme. It was launched in 2022 to address local transport issues by providing five free-to-hire electric vehicles, alongside other community-supporting projects. It sounded too good to be true, but I booked the maximum three-day rental – enough time to see at least nine of the villages. I was informed that if I arrived by train, someone would meet me at the station.
Sure enough, Duarte Rodrigues welcomes me like an old friend. “The project’s main focus is tourism to the historic villages, but some of the cars are used for the community, to take elderly people to the market or distribute meals,” he says on the gorgeous drive to the medieval hamlet of Castelo Novo, 650 metres up the slopes of the Serra da Gardunha. Take-up was nearly equal between tourists and residents, he adds.
A few minutes later, outside the romanesque town hall, Duarte hands me the keys to my Megane E-Tech with a wave. It’s worth staying for a night at Pedra Nova, a gorgeously renovated boutique B&B, but it needs to be booked well in advance and I am keen to make the most of my time in the EV. Having decided to skip popular Piódão and Monsanto – now a House of the Dragon jet-setting destination – my first stop is Belmonte. Like all 12 aldeias, this hazy hilltop town played a pivotal role in Portugal’s identity. A Brazilian flag flutters behind a statue of local legend Pedro Álvares Cabral, the first European to “discover” Brazil. I stroll through the old Jewish Quarter’s single-storey granite houses to Bet Eliahu synagogue, built 500 years after King Manuel I’s 1496 decree expelling Jews from the kingdom.
Centum Cellas, a Roman villa near Belmonte. Photograph: Luis Fonseca/Getty Images/iStockphoto
Continuing to 12th-century Linhares da Beira, I wander the leafy slopes of the Serra da Estrela – mainland Portugal’s highest range. Similar to much-loved Monsanto, the hamlet lies between and atop giant granite boulders. From the largest rocky outcrop, where the castle’s crenellated walls rise, the Mondego valley’s panorama is endless. Other than an airborne paraglider and a man hawking hand-carved magnets in the car park, there’s not a soul in sight.
I walk a stretch of slabbed Roman road that once linked Mérida in Spain to Braga, north of Porto, and remember why I adore these villages. History is bite-size, hushed and unhurried, the antithesis of my home in the Algarve. After a brief drive, I park up and plug in outside the medieval defences of the most populated aldeia.
Founded in the ninth century, handsome Trancoso hides behind hefty, turret-topped walls that have witnessed royal nuptials and numerous skirmishes. Today, walking beneath weathered porticos and streets lined with hydrangeas, it feels like the calmest place in the world. As does Solar Sampaio e Melo, a palatial 17th-century guesthouse – repurchased by a descendant of the original owners in 2011 – with an honesty bar and a pool shaded by turrets.
Following a late breakfast of sardinhas doces, Troncoso’s sardine-shaped, almond-stuffed sweets, I make for Marialva. The satnav states 30 minutes, but with back-road detours to gawp at giant granite mounds around Moreira de Rei, I reach the massif-mounted castle well after lunch. Occupied by the Aravos, a Lusitanian tribe, then the Romans and Moors, this was a crucial site for the advance of the Christian Reconquista.
An old chap in a checkered shirt sits hammering almonds from their shells outside his home. I buy a bulging bag for €7 and gobble a handful inside the semi-ruined citadel, where Bonelli’s eagles soar and cacti reclaim the stone. The flavour transports me to my Algarvian childhood holidays, when I’d hide from the sun (and my parents) under almond trees. For a second, it feels like Portugal hasn’t changed in 30 years. Perhaps here, far from the coast, little has.
The castle at Marialva. Photograph: Vitor Ribeiro/Alamy
The journey to Castelo Rodrigo is filled with awe, particularly around the craggy valley sliced by the Côa river. Just upstream is a unique collection of rock art etchings from three eras – prehistory, protohistory and history – and Faia Brava, Portugal’s first private nature reserve, co-founded by biologist Ana Berliner, her husband and others. In 2004, the couple renovated Casa da Cisterna into a boutique guesthouse, and on its wisteria-draped terrace, Ana welcomes me with sugared almonds and fresh juice. I enquire about Faia Brava (Ana guides guests on excursions to the reserve and the prehistoric rock art) and whether they’re concerned about tourism growing.
“These small villages benefit a lot [from tourism] because there aren’t many people living here or many opportunities, so people are moving to the big cities,” she tells me. “If you retain your people, and your young people spend those days living here, it’s very good.”
As I poke around the castle ruins, I mull over how the Portuguese writer José Saramago described Castelo Rodrigo in Journey to Portugal (1981): “desolation, infinite sadness” and “abandoned by those who once lived here”. I’m reassured that Ana is right. Lisbon’s tourism boom has created Europe’s least affordable city for locals. Yet, in these hinterlands, the right tourism approach could help preserve local customs.
Unlike most of the aldeias, Castelo Rodrigo was founded by the Kingdom of León. It became Portuguese when the 1297 treaty of Alcanizes defined one of Europe’s oldest frontiers. Reminders of Spain linger, such as the Ávila-style semicircular turrets and ruined Cristóvão de Moura palace, constructed under the Habsburg Spanish kings. Portuguese locals later torched it.
With no charging station in Castelo Rodrigo (work is under way to expand the project to other villages, including the installation of chargers and the opening of new bases with additional cars in 2026), I drive to Figueira de Castelo Rodrigo, the modern town below. At Taverna da Matilde flaming chouriço scents the dining room, and the pork loin – bisaro, an indigenous part-pig, part‑boar – is perfect. I sleep like a prince at Casa da Cisterna.
Breakfast is a casual, communal affair of buttery Seia mountain cheese and pão com chouriço, followed by a quick stop at Castelo Rodrigo’s wine cooperative to collect a case of robust Touriga Nacional (tours and tastings €18pp). In Almeida, a star-shaped military town, I roam the grassy ramparts before continuing south. Swallows soon replace eagles, and granite fades into gentle farmland.
Approaching Castelo Mendo. Photograph: Daniel James Clarke
I breathe in the silence, standing by Castelo Mendo’s twin-turreted gate. It feels like the world has stopped. I tiptoe across the ruined castle keep and am transfixed by the endless panorama of olive groves, cherry trees and occasional shepherd’s huts.
In search of coffee, I step into a dimly lit stone room below a sign that reads D Sancho. Inside is an old-world retail marvel. Photos of popes, boxes of wine, retired horseshoes, mounds of old coins and “mystery boxes” that I’m tempted to spend a tenner on. A hunched woman with a smile gifts me a shot of ginjinha, the local cherry liquor, and signals me to sit with her on the bench outside. We don’t speak, yet I somehow feel a connection to her land. I buy a bottle in the hope of taking that feeling home.
My final stop, Sortelha, comes with high expectations – Saramago promised a perfectly preserved medieval town. Hulking walls cradle a 16th-century cluster of stone houses dominated by a castle that crowns an outcrop. Almost on cue, fog and showers shroud it all in mystery. I retreat to O Foral, where plates of bacalhau (salted cod) are bathed in pistachio-hued local olive oil.
Parking back in Castelo Novo with a panic-inducing 7% charge showing on the dash, I am grateful to return the keys, and use the time before my lift to the station to survey the Knights Templar’s former domain from the 12th-century castle.
Stopping outside the red door where Saramago reportedly once stayed, I ponder how he would describe these villages 44 years later. Hopefully, he’d recount that, for the traveller, timeless magic remains, but those returning and reviving have vanquished any melancholy.
Home affairs correspondent in the Algarve, Portugal
Watch: The BBC’s Daniel Sandford at the scene of the new search operation
Portuguese and German authorities have started a new search for Madeleine McCann in Portugal, nearly two decades after her disappearance.
Madeleine was three years old when she vanished from an apartment complex in Praia da Luz in the Algarve during a family holiday on 3 May 2007.
The British toddler’s disappearance sparked a Europe-wide police investigation, and is one of the world’s highest-profile unsolved missing person cases.
On Monday, Portuguese police confirmed the search, carried out on warrants by German prosecutors, was across 21 different plots of land – between the resort Madeleine went missing from and where the prime suspect in her disappearance had been staying.
The search – which covers the municipality of Lagos near Praia da Luz – is due to continue until Friday.
On Tuesday morning, a Portuguese fire engine andfour vehicles carrying German police arrived on the search site – located around 3.5 miles from the resort where Madeleine was last seen.
Roads leading up to the site – which is sizable and mostly scrubland – have been closed off since Monday, while the day’s focus appears to be on disused buildings near the coast. A large, blue tent has also been erected in the same area.
Around 30 German police officers are expected to participate in the search.
Madeleine’s case was initially handled by the Portuguese authorities with the aid of the Metropolitan Police. In 2019, the British government said it would fund the Met Police inquiry, which began in 2011, until March 2020.
AFP via Getty Images
Authorities are one day into their search which they say will continue until Friday
Reuters
A blue tent has been set up on the search site
A year later, German investigators took the lead in the case when they identified German national Christian Brückner as the prime suspect.
The 48-year-old is currently serving a sentence in Germany for a separate crime – the rape of a 72-year-old American tourist in Portugal in 2005. He was due to be released in September, but this could be pushed back to early 2026 if he does not pay a fine he owes.
German authorities fear that if Brückner is not charged with anything, he will disappear after his release.
They suspect him of murder but have not found enough evidence to bring charges, while Brückner repeatedly denies any involvement.
Portuguese authorities have also named Brückner as a formal suspect, or “arguido”. They said they would hand over any evidence seized in the latest search to German authorities.
Met Police, which this week said it was aware of the searches being carried out by German police in Portugal, continues its investigation into Madeleine’s disappearance.
The case, known as Operation Grange, has been ongoing since 2011.
Officials have not disclosed if they are conducting this latest search in Portugal based on any new information, making it appear as if they are taking one last look in places where evidence or a body could have been hidden.
German police have a European warrant, which has been approved by Portuguese prosecutors, to allow them to conduct searches on private land.
The team of German and Portuguese investigators have been given permission to search 21 plots of land between the Ocean Club resort Madeleine disappeared from and where Brückner had been staying at the time.
The previous search was two years ago, focused around a reservoir where Madeleine was last seen.
Brückner, who spent time in the area between 2000 and 2017, was found to have photographs and videos of himself near the reservoir.
On the night Madeleine disappeared, her parents had been at dinner with friends at a restaurant a short walk away while their three-year-old daughter and her younger twin siblings were asleep in the ground-floor apartment.
Her mother, Kate, discovered she was missing at around 22:00 local time.
A German documentary in 2022 found evidence that Brückner occasionally worked at the Ocean Club as a handyman, while German prosecutors have also linked his mobile phone data and a car sale to their case against him.
Last month, Madeleine’s parents marked the 18th year anniversary of her disappearance, saying their “determination to leave no stone unturned is unwavering”.
