Melides, Portugal: The Alentejo Beach Town That Hasn't Sold Its Soul Yet
Ninety minutes south of Lisbon, past cork forests and rice fields, sits a fishing village with under 1,500 residents and a beach so open you can lose sight of other people entirely. That's Melides — and if you've read a travel headline this year calling it Portugal's next big thing, you're not imagining it. The real question isn't if Melides is having a moment — it clearly is. It's what to do about that before the moment changes the place for good. Where Melides Sits on the Map Melides belongs to the Grândola municipality, on Portugal's Alentejo coast, roughly 120 kilometers (about 75 miles) south of Lisbon. It sits between Grândola and Sines, a short drive from Comporta — the beach town that made this stretch of coastline famous first. The parish covers about 155 square kilometers and counted around 1,459 residents in Portugal's 2021 census. That small number does a lot of work. Low density is the whole draw: no high-rise hotels, no strip of beach bar...