Just when we think the Regional Government has fallen asleep, it surprises us with yet another far-fetched narrative—this time about the supposed benefits of tourism.

Everywhere in the world, including mainland Portugal and Madeira, the performance of the tourism sector is measured by the number of overnight stays and guests. But the Azores Government, backed by the PSD, has invented a different metric in order to spin a dubious interpretation of the “success” of a tourism industry that has been in decline for eight consecutive months.

The much-celebrated tourism revenue figures praised by both refer only to the traditional hotel sector, since there are no records of the revenues generated by other types of accommodation, namely Local Lodging (Alojamento Local) and Rural Tourism, which together account for nearly half of this important pillar of the Azorean economy.

Higher hotel revenues do not mean “better tourism,” nor do they represent a more sustainable or competitive sector, just as higher revenues and more passengers at SATA do not mean profit. Quite the opposite—they simply add to the airline’s growing losses.

The same narrative is now being applied to the fishing sector. Most Azorean fishermen are broke as a joke, with catches declining across the board. But because the tuna fleet had a successful season and generated higher revenues, the “success” of the entire fishing industry is being celebrated.

With just a little more effort, we may soon see more press releases triumphantly celebrating the “success” of healthcare in the Azores.

Waiting lists keep growing every month? The average wait for surgery is now well over a year and a half? Specialist appointments are virtually impossible to obtain? What does any of that matter if hospitals collected more user fees and revenues increased? Let’s celebrate the “success”!

With inflation running through the economy, of course revenues increase. The inconvenient truth is that costs have risen even faster, especially throughout the entire logistics chain that supports tourism.

What is unfortunate is that there is no breakdown of tourism revenues between domestic and foreign visitors, so we can understand just how much ground we have lost in the domestic market—the very market that used to sustain us during the low season.

The mismanagement of this sector is one of the greatest failures of this government, the only one in fifty years of Autonomy to accomplish the dubious feat of dragging us back to the 1990s with the unwanted monopoly of TAP and SATA.

Adding insult to injury, this narrow and distorted reading of the statistics is an affront to the countless entrepreneurs and workers in Local Lodging, Rural Tourism, car rentals, restaurants, and the entire supply chain that supports the tourism industry—all of whom are ignored in the government’s euphoric press releases.

Even on the psychoanalyst’s couch, there are things about this government that psychoanalysis cannot explain.

PLATFORMS OF DISASTER — Montenegro’s Government continues its steep decline in the opinion polls. Hardly surprising, given that most of its ministries seem capable of little beyond one blunder after another.

All of us who live in Portugal’s Autonomous Regions can testify to the repeated failures in matters that directly affect our daily lives.

We already had the ill-fated mobility subsidy process, still bogged down by the stubbornness of a minister who cannot even get a digital platform to function properly. Now we have another ministry—the Ministry of Education—which has also failed to manage the digitalization of school examinations, leaving students and teachers in limbo for weeks.

Word has it that the Regional Secretariat for Education has washed its hands of the whole affair and is itself hopelessly lost in the bureaucracy of an administrative machine that never stops testing citizens’ patience.

One could say that this government has achieved a remarkable level of technological efficiency—to the point of accomplishing the unprecedented feat of creating the world’s first 100 percent analog artificial intelligence, where even the “Submit” button requires ministerial approval before it can be pressed.

(This column is taking a vacation—to “let Luís work”…)

Osvaldo Cabral
July 2026

(Published in Açoriano Oriental, Diário Insular, Portuguese Times (USA), and LusoPresse (Montreal).)

Osvaldo Cabral is an emeritus journalist with over 40 years of experience covering the Azores. He was the director of RTP-A (the public television station) and the Diário dos Açores newspaper. He is a regular columnist for many newspapers throughout the Azpres and the Diaspora.

NOVIDADES will feature occasional opinion pieces from various leading thinkers and writers in the Azores, providing the diaspora and those interested in the current state of the Azores with insight into the diverse opinions on some of the archipelago’s key issues.