The party warned of the recurring focus of pollution caused by the plastic bags with sand used to defend the primary dune, where the course is located, from the advance of the sea, and stated that “renaturalisation and recovery” of the area is necessary.

"The Left Block requires the immediate removal of plastic bags and other waste from Estela beach, and that the golf course be relocated from this sensitive coastal area to allow for the promotion of the recovery of the primary dune, thus applying a natural-based solution that will make it possible to provide greater protection to agricultural fields located to the east”, said BE in a statement.

The party reported that there were works to protect the dune, carried out in August this year, by the Portuguese Environment Agency (APA), with artificial increasing of the sand, at a cost of €115,000, but after a few months this was washed away by the natural process of the sea.

“The Left Block had the information that the entire intervention to protect the primary dune had already been eroded, not even two months later. It was an artificial, costly and short-term intervention to protect the dune, already degraded by the installation of the golf course and leaving the bags that had been buried now uncovered”.

In August of this year, in response to a request for clarification from the party, the Ministry of Environment informed that the artificial increasing of the beach would be the solution "which guarantees greater efficiency in the short term in the face of erosion problems that justify urgent intervention", but it defended that action “must be combined in the future with actions of dune rehabilitation, ensuring greater resilience of this stretch of coastline”.

In that same letter, the ministry pointed out that "the company Estela Golfe has the task of monitoring the protection infrastructure it has installed in front of the golf course, as well as intervening, whenever it finds that there are degraded bags, in order to remove and prevent them let them being swept away by the sea”.

In April, after a complaint by the People-Animals-Nature (PAN) party about the focus of pollution with debris from plastic bags, the company that owns the golf course proceeded to clean up the sand, but recalled that “the solutions to protect the dune and the invasion of the sea for the properties that face the sea shore are exclusively the decision of the APA”.