Vale do Lobo was among the first
tourist resorts to be built in Portugal, having been catalysed by the
Estado Novo's decision in 1962 to build
Faro Airport following the success in the 1950s of luxury Spanish resorts such as
Torremolinos. In 1962,
Trust House Forte acquired the land, which became Vale do Lobo, with the intention of turning it into a luxury resort. At the time, the region was a
stone pine forest with a sand
beach. Townhouses and villas were built for tourists and permanent foreign residents. An 18-hole golf course designed by
Henry Cotton was built, and Vale do Lobo quickly became a popular destination with the British market. In 1968, Trust House Forte and
Costain Group opened the first
five-star hotel in the Algarve, the Dona Filipa, named after
Philippa of Lancaster, whose marriage to
John I of Portugal confirmed the 700-year-old
Anglo-Portuguese Alliance. In 1977, the
Venlo-born Dutch entrepreneur Sander van Gelder acquired the resort out of
receivership after it had struggled financially following the 1974
Carnation Revolution. He had originally intended to acquire just a small plot of land in the area but ended up taking the opportunity to acquire the whole resort. The resort was run under van Gelder's ownership for the next thirty years, adding another eighteen-hole golf course and many facilities, including bars, restaurants and shops. The resort hosted the
Portuguese Open in 2002 and 2003. In 2006, a combination of Portuguese and international investors, together with the Portuguese state-owned bank
Caixa Geral de Depósitos, acquired the development from van Gelder, installing Diogo Gaspar Ferreira as CEO. Over the next four years, the consortium took out twelve loans to further develop the resort for a total new debt of 249 million euros. By the summer of 2015, all of these loans were in
arrearage. Because five of these loans were from
Caixa, at a time when
Armando Vara was the bank's administrator, they were investigated as part of
Operation Marquis, and figured in the charges against
José Sócrates and other
Operation Marquis defendants. ==Golf Courses==