Portuguese president Seguro demands action on Serra da Estrela, says almost none of €155M invested

Presidential address in Guarda

President António José Seguro used a ceremony marking the 150th anniversary of the Associação Humanitária dos Bombeiros Voluntários Egitanienses in Guarda on Sunday, 9 August, to demand concrete action on the revitalization of the Serra da Estrela Natural Park. The celebrations included a flag-raising, the awarding of commemorative medals of the 150th anniversary, a formal session, and a traditional motorized parade through the city's main streets. Seguro told attendees that the promise to recover and revitalize the Serra da Estrela has been dragging on for too long, dating back to the large fires of August 2022 that devastated a significant part of the territory for more than two weeks. The speech coincided with the 50th anniversary of the Parque Natural da Serra da Estrela.

Unfulfilled funding promises

The President recalled that €155 million were announced for the revitalization of the Serra da Estrela, but said that almost nothing has been invested. He criticized the governments led by António Costa and Luís Montenegro, pointing to the gap between commitments assumed and the investment actually carried out. The mayor of Guarda, Sérgio Costa, provided a more specific figure in statements to TSF: of the €155 million, about €20 million have been executed or are in execution, with the remainder still to be implemented. Costa cited structural road improvements for the park's green roads to improve mobility safety, as well as water-related measures including the Barragem do Planalto de Videmonte, which could supply eight municipalities. He noted that some measures take not months but several years to implement.

We have to move from words to actions.

Persistent prevention failures

Seguro referenced the recently revealed report by the Comissão Técnica Independente, which evaluated the fires of August 2025. He said the report points to something even more concerning: much was left undone after the previous reports following the 2017 fires, and those failures reduced Portugal's capacity to respond to last year's large fires. The President argued that Portugal cannot continue to concentrate efforts only on fighting flames, insisting on the importance of investing in forest management and risk reduction before the most critical period. He said he has repeatedly conveyed, in documents and official contacts, the need to improve both prevention and response capacity.

It is urgent to prevent the proposed measures from remaining in the drawer, postponed sine die.

Broader warnings

The President framed fire prevention within a broader challenge related to population safety in the face of extreme phenomena. He repeated words he had spoken exactly a year earlier, when Portugal was facing a large-scale wave of fires, insisting on the need for the country to unite to overcome the tragedy of fires and to focus on prevention.

There cannot be tears in the summer and indifference the rest of the year.

Seguro said that storms, heatwaves, earthquakes, and the frequency of devastating fires in Portugal and elsewhere call for timely, mobilizing, and scientifically grounded action. He called for overcoming the political blame-shifting, arguing that the Serra da Estrela is one of the main assets of Portugal's interior and deserves more than promises. The President also said these threats call for attentive observation by the Presidency of the Republic over the protection and safety of communities, to which he has dedicated a significant part of his work.