“Life is better here. I want to invite both the older and younger generations to consider projects like this and think about what we can do if we all stay here. If we take advantage of our potential here in Portugal, instead of squandering it elsewhere. And to take advantage of it by obtaining the quality of life that many legitimately want,” said Luís Montenegro in Monção, in the district of Viana do Castelo, where he inaugurated Minho Park, a 56-hectare business park located near the border with Galicia, Spain.

For the official, the region offers “an enormous competitive advantage, and there are not many places in Europe and the world that can offer it with such consistency.”

“This region offers an enormous quality of life. It offers good public services, good jobs, and good opportunities for advancement. It offers proximity to major centres, and proximity means connectivity, in terms of physical and technological mobility,” he described.

“Let us all know how to praise, appreciate, and develop what we have. And we truly have a great opportunity with us,” he insisted.

Montenegro pointed to Minho Park Monção as “a good example” of what the Government intends for Portugal, explaining that he is referring to “making wills converge, to entrepreneurial boldness” or “to the ability to believe in people.”

“This business area will mainly have industry and services. But how many areas of economic activity will benefit from what will be done here? This multiplies. It will bring more commerce, more tourism, and more need to strengthen public services. All of this is an anchor for development.

Montenegro therefore asked: “Let's take advantage of these factors of productivity, location, natural conditions, human capital, our willingness to reform, transform and be at the forefront of knowledge and innovation.”

The Prime Minister said he was convinced that “a new centrality will be created in Monção that will spread and positively contaminate” Alto Minho and the Northern region.

“We seek for Portugal to be an anchor of modern infrastructure, and today we have consolidated ‘clusters’,” he said.

On the other hand, the government official pointed to the business park as “an example of what many of our mayors can, should and have sought to do to counteract the inevitability of the population and economic decline of the less populated regions.”

“I am disturbed when they say that Monção is inland, because we are dozens of kilometres from the coast. Monção is at the epicentre of Northern Portugal and Galicia, on this Atlantic front where more than three and a half million people live, where fundamental infrastructures are located - from ports, airports, roads, railways, technological centres, knowledge centres, good universities,” he observed.

Montenegro indicated that “proximity is being close, sometimes in physical distance, other times in technological distance, in distance from the vanguard of knowledge, of presence, of participation.”

The Prime Minister responded to the Mayor of Monção's appeal for investment in road access to the municipality, saying he knows “that the road part is lacking” and acknowledging the “limitations” of access.

Montenegro only promised that the “first connection is to Monção” and the second to Melgaço.

“This is a branch that deserves a lot of attention from the public authorities. "Only those who don't come here don't realise the limitations of road access," he observed, highlighting the high-speed rail line, the increased value of Francisco Sá Carneiro Airport in Porto, and "the connection of this entire network with Europe and the world."