Melgaço’s Transfer Story Report
1. Planning a long wanted and challenging voyage.
Understanding the practice
Melgaço is the most northern municipality of Portugal, bordering on Galicia in Spain.
It covers a territory of 238 Km2 and has a population of 8,200 of which 3,000 live in the town of Melgaço with the remainder living in 34 surrounding villages.
Experiencing a long term decline process, founded in economic decline and outmigration and continuous loss of population since the ‘60s (there were 18,000 in 1960), Melgaço also faces a severe condition of aging of those who stay behind.
Apart from others, one of the consequences of this complex process, results in an oversupply of empty retail premises in the town centre, thus having a major knock-on effect on neighbouring shops and the general economic attractiveness of the town.