And because they never taste as good anywhere else they hold a festival in Portimao where they’re packed in like sardines.
Anybody who has stopped off in a lay-by on a road trip through Portugal will be familiar.
With the smells emanating from the grills.
Off the scales
Portimao in the Algarve makes a virtue of its fish.
With the Sardine Festival a particular highlight every August.
Where for five nights, the streets are lined with craft stalls and grilled sardines.
There are also concerts and historical reenactments of the unloading of the sardine.
And a ‘sardinhada’ – a classic charcoal grilled sardine – for all visitors.
Around Portimao
This year’s event will be the 30th iteration.
And if last year’s is anything to go by then it’ll be right off the scales.
With 2.5 tons of sardines consumed.
Now much of the action will play out around the marina.
And the first of the city’s beaches, Praia da Rocha.
With its towering rock formations, a 17th-century fort.
And a boulevard lined with restaurants, bars, shops, clubs, and hotels with sea views.
It’s no exaggeration to say that Portimao is filled to the gills with sea creatures.
A lesson in fish
All of which you can learn for yourself so that you can look knowledgeable around Festival.
At the town’s award-winning museum.
Which sits on the site of Portimão’s largest sardine canning factory which closed in the 1980s.
But reopened in 2008 and explains the fish canning industry in the area.
It shows the restored production lines and artifacts found around the region (many of them underwater).
Dating back to prehistoric and Roman times.
With everything helpfully labelled in Portuguese and English.
And now that we’ve picked out the bones, it’s over to you to book your flights to Faro and treat yourself to a fishy feast.
