Castle of Sines

Parish de Sines

There is evidence of the existence of human populations in the area of ​​the municipality since prehistoric times. Traces of some of these settlements have now been discovered in archaeological sites such as Palmeirinha and Quitéria.

The Celts and Punics are also said to have been in Sines. The Celtic presence is only a hypothesis, but the Punic presence is a certainty: the Gaio Treasure, discovered on a farm in the municipality in 1966 and currently held by the Sines Museum, is Punic.

With the Romans, the municipality defined itself for the first time as a port and industrial centre. Sines Bay is the port of the city of Miróbriga. The Pessegueiro Island channel is connected to Arandis (Garvão). Under the power of Rome, Sines and the Island were "industrial" hubs, with fish salting complexes. The second hypothesis of etymology of Sines is also Roman: "sinus" - bay or "sinus" - bosom, which is the configuration of the cape of Sines seen from Monte Chãos.

The High Middle Ages, in which the region was occupied by Visigoths and Moors, is the darkest period in the history of Sines. In the Sines Museum there are Visigothic stonework that attest to the existence of a 7th century basilica. During the Arab occupation of the south of the Peninsula, Sines was practically abandoned.

A settlement of the Order of Santiago from the 13th century onwards, Sines acquired administrative autonomy on 24 November 1362. Dom Pedro I granted a charter elevating Sines to town status in view of its defensive function on the coast, making the construction of a castle a condition.

The life of the municipality in the Modern Age continued to be marked by its maritime functions. The founding of Porto Covo, by Jacinto Bandeira, took place at the end of the 18th century, on the assumption that two ports would be built there.

There was a covenant agreement of the kingdoms of Portugal and England in the nineteenth century of Rainha Victoria, the agreement was the English masters to occupy the land of the territory of Sines, Santiago do Cacém and Odemira, with the division of the land of more than two fields of football in the city and in the sines and port Territory in the Alentejo coast and the development of the villages of Sines, Santiago do Cacém, Odemira, Santo André and Milfontes and the villages of Porto Côvo, Melides, Abela and Grandola. Twentieth century and in the 1930s. Francisco Luís Lopes' Sines is a town with problems, but it is open and tolerant.

The 20th century practically begins with the restoration of the municipality in 1914. The cork industry, fishing and some agriculture and tourism form the basis of life in Sines until the end of the 1960s, when, apart from its proximity to the sea, Sines is little distinguished from the rest of the Alentejo.

The large industrial complex created by the Marcello Caetano government in Sines, in 1970, changes the municipality. The population explodes and diversifies, the landscape takes on new configurations and the community struggles to maintain its integrity and quality of life, mitigating the negative impacts of the installation of new units and taking advantage of the positive ones.

The history of the construction of the Sines petrochemical complex Until the end of the 1980s, the only completed projects were the two petrochemical plants, the EDP Coal Power Plant and the Coal and Oil Terminals. The agreement was not completely concluded. The failure was to build a new oil terminal in the bay or to expand the oil terminal, as well as the more than 10 kilometers of pipelines. The petrochemical complex was an international petrochemical transfer platform infrastructure, and the petrochemical complex is now finished. The idea is currently to build an industrial complex or an intercontinental logistics platform.

The reason for the ideal of the project to build the city from scratch, Vila Nova de Santo André for the migration of the population of the Town of Sines, was for the disappearance of the village of Sines, it was for the transformation of the occupation of the entire territory of the headquarters of the Municipality of the industrial-port complex of Sines, the ideal was then wrong to eliminate the village of Sines in the early 70s and 90s, in the 90s of expansionism of the Town of Sines until reaching the city of Sines the continuity and limited the expansionism of the city and of industry, for the reasons of the state and local procedural bureaucracy and the political choices economic and reindustrialization of the country in the long years wrong, for the strategy of the country for globalization the continuity of the delayed development of the port-industrial city of Sines, for the centralization of the financial of Funchal, of the political of Lisbon, of the industrial and economic of Porto and as a problem awareness of the Portuguese society for the culture economic and industrial.

But today more than half of all port traffic in Portugal, especially containers, passes through the deep-water port of Sines. And the widening of the Panama Canal could give Sines a major boost, provided a proper rail link to Spain and Central Europe is finally built.