Photography: RR
Quercus recently released the list of 392 beaches qualified with Gold Quality in 2021. In the Municipality of Mafra, seven beaches received the 2021 Gold Quality Award – one less than last year.
Algodio, Baleia, Coxos, Foz do Lizandro-Mar, Porto da Calada, Ribeira d’Ilhas and São Lourenço are the beaches that, this year, may hoist the Gold Quality flag (Ribeira, or Pescadores, did not achieve this distinction this year).
Mafra municipality kept, this year, seven of the eight awarded beaches in 2020
Across the country, this year, six more beaches were qualified in comparison to 2021 and the region with the most awarded beaches (a total of 100) was the Tagus and West Region. With 93 beaches, followed by the Algarve Region and the North Region totaled 72.
Of the 392 qualified beaches, 329 are coastal, 52 are located inland and 11 are transition beaches.
You can check the complete list of awarded beaches here.
Quercus – National Association for the Conservation of Nature distinguishes, with this seal, the quality of bathing water on Portuguese beaches. This assessment uses official public information provided by the Portuguese Environment Agency, taking into account only the analyzes carried out in the laboratories of the different Regional Hydrographic Administrations.
According to the criteria defined in 2021, to receive the classification of “Gold Quality Beach”, bathing water must meet the following criteria:
• Excellent water quality in the last five bathing seasons from 2016 to 2020;
• All analyzes carried out in the last bathing season (2020) must have presented better results than the values defined for the 95th percentile of Annex I of the Bathing Water Directive; that is, for coastal and transitional waters, all analyzes must present values below 100 cfu/100ml for intestinal Enterococci and less than 250 cfu/100ml for Escherichia coli, and for inland waters, 200 cfu/100ml and 500 cfu/100ml, respectively;
• In the last bathing season (2020) there may not have been any occurrences/notices against bathing, prohibition of bathing and/or temporary banning of the beach.
Esta publicação também está disponível em | This article is also available in: Portuguese (Portugal)
