One of the more unexpected consequences of a globalized economy has been the propensity of the British to export our property boom to some select faraway places. The verdant golf developments of Portugal with their fairways lined with elegant villas, luxury hotels and sea views long ago became - in part at least - enclaves which will forever be England, populated by determined-looking Home Counties types, typically to be found striding across the greens sporting baseball caps and those short-sleeved shirts that come with a crocodile logo.
The extent of the colonisation is considerable. At the Boavista Resort, near Lagos on the Western Algarve, 90 per cent of buyers are British, according to the Cheshire-based development company, Jones Homes.
There are now in excess of two dozen similar complexes dotted along the coast of Southern Portugal and the successful formula seldom varies, key elements being an 18-hole golf course of international standard, a smart hotel, leisure complex and of course a range of two-, three- and four- bedroom apartments, townhouses and villas, preferably all with a golf course at the bottom of the garden.
The pioneer of all of this was a Portuguese entrepreneur Andre Jordan who, back in the Seventies, when Portugal was a fascist dictatorship run by the Salazarists, managed to acquire a piece of rundown farmland between the coast and a stagnant freshwater pool that was a short drive from Faro airport. It was called Quinta do Lago, Estate of the Lake. Jordon hired the American golf course designer William Mitchell and opened for business in 1974.
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