News and developments from Porto, Portugal's second city.
From Thursday, residents of Porto who hold the municipal Porto Card can ride the metro and buses across the metropolitan Andante network for free. Mayor Pedro Duarte launched the roughly 59,400-user scheme at Trindade station; it is valued at up to €20.5 million a year.
Your weekly roundup from the Invicta: Pedro Duarte weighs free public transport as early as this summer, Metro do Porto's metrobus edges toward service, a red-alert heatwave settles over the north, FC Porto opens pre-season at Olival, and the Coliseu bets on the city's new bands.
Exponor, the largest exhibition complex in northern Portugal, has been sold to a Quadrantis Capital and MCaetano venture for €40 million. AEP keeps running the Matosinhos fairground under a 25-year lease, with a €15 million modernisation promised and an option to buy it back after 20 years.
A study Galp commissioned from PwC values the Innovation District planned for its shuttered Matosinhos refinery at roughly €2 billion a year over 30 years, with 100,000 jobs — 65,000 in Matosinhos — plus homes for 19,000 residents and campuses for 30,000 students. Demolition ends in December 2026.
Researchers at Porto's i3S institute have validated a strategy for personalised therapeutic vaccines against colorectal cancer, identifying tumour neoantigens that could train a patient's immune system to attack the disease.
TAP has switched on new routes this week — Porto to Terceira and Praia, and Lisbon to Athens and Curitiba — as it leans on Porto's airport and formally exits its restructuring plan ahead of a partial privatisation.
The Chilean recluse (Loxosceles laeta), whose bite can cause necrotic skin lesions, has been recorded in Porto — the first for Portugal and the Iberian Peninsula. Researchers stress the shy spider poses a low risk to the public.
