A Spanish Fund Pays 130 Million Euros for Faro's Forum Algarve, Its First Purchase Outside Spain
Alfana Investment Management is buying the 27,400 square metre centre with 115 shops, 7.8 million annual visits and tenant sales above 120 million euros. Occupancy is close to 100 percent, and the money comes from Santander wealth-management clients.
Alfana Investment Management, a Spanish asset manager that buys shopping centres, has made its first purchase outside Spain, and it chose Faro. The firm is paying roughly 130 million euros for Forum Algarve, the covered centre on the northern edge of the city, with the transaction signed in Lisbon on Wednesday. The deal was first reported by the Spanish business daily Expansión.
Forum Algarve opened in 2001 and covers 27,400 square metres. It holds 115 shops and more than 2,200 parking spaces, and its 2025 accounts record over 7.8 million visits and tenant sales above 120 million euros. Occupancy is close to 100 percent.
Who is in it
The tenant list explains the price. Every Inditex brand trades there, alongside Mango, Tendam, Fnac and Primor, with a food and drink line-up that includes McDonald's and Starbucks. For a buyer looking for a stabilised asset with predictable footfall, that is close to the template. Alfana's stated strategy is to buy in consolidated, high-traffic locations, and it points to Faro's growing resident population as well as its tourist flow.
The new owners intend to fold the Portuguese centre into Rivoli Retail, the platform through which Alfana manages its Spanish portfolio. The purchase was funded with money from Banco Santander's wealth-management clients. Garrigues advised on the legal side, KPMG on audit, and RPE, CBRE and GMD Consultoría on the property work.
What it says about Algarve retail
The figure that matters most in the accounts is the 7.8 million visits, because it is largely a tourism number. Faro is the arrival point for most visitors to the Algarve, and a centre of this size in a city of roughly 60,000 residents depends on people passing through. Buying it is a bet that the flow holds.
That bet is not obviously safe. Algarve hoteliers went into this summer expecting a softer season than 2025, and the region's exposure to a single source market has been a running theme of the year. Set against that, a fully let centre with anchor tenants on long leases is about as defensive as Algarve retail property gets.
It also continues a pattern of foreign institutional money moving into Portuguese retail assets. Sonae Sierra has been building food-retail funds with German and Spanish partners, and cross-border vehicles have been picking up Portuguese supermarket and mall stock steadily through the year.
What this means for expats
- Nothing changes at the doors: ownership transfers do not alter trading hours, leases or the tenant mix in the short term. The brands in Forum Algarve are contracted well beyond the sale.
- Watch the rebranding: integration into Rivoli Retail is the change most likely to become visible, in signage and centre management rather than in shops.
- Context for the region: one in four Algarve hoteliers expected a softer summer than 2025, which is the demand risk sitting under this valuation.
- The wider flow of capital: Sonae Sierra has been assembling a 600 million euro food-retail fund across Iberia, and German institutional money has been buying Continente stores.
- Tourism is the underlying asset: Portugal's own tourism strategy has shifted from volume to value, which over time changes who walks through a centre like this one.
