Description Alcochete

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Alcochete is a Portuguese village in the Setúbal district, belonging to the Lisbon Metropolitan Area, with about 10 700 inhabitants.

It is the seat of a municipality with 128.36 km² in area and 17,569 inhabitants, subdivided into 3 parishes. The municipality is limited to the north by the municipality of Benavente, to the east and southeast by Palmela, to the southwest by the main area of ??the municipality of Montijo and to the northwest by the Tagus estuary.

Alcochete is home to the Tagus Estuary Nature Reserve, with numerous salt marshes where several species of water birds nest. Despite its name, the Alcochete Shooting Range is located in the municipality of Benavente.

Founded by the Arabs under the name "Alcaxete" which means ovens and whose origin is thought to be due to the large ovens for baking clay that existed here, Alcochete was conquered by D. Afonso Henriques, 1st King of Portugal, in the 19th century. XII.

In the century. XV, this region where species such as deer, wild boar and wolves abounded, was very frequented by the nobility who organized big hunts here, and stayed for long seasons in their summer residences.

Salt pans are the great natural wealth of this area, and Alcochete was for a long time considered the most important salt production center in the country, an activity that even today remains fundamental in the local economy.

As in almost all of Ribatejo, horses and bulls are also raised in Alcochete, and the population cultivates a taste for the "wild party", which reaches its peak in the "Festas do Barrete Verde and Salinas", which take place annually on the 2nd week of August, and in which the starts and runs of the bulls are the most characteristic spectacle.

Nearby is the Tagus Estuary Nature Reserve, where you can see several birds that pass through here during their migrations, of which the flocks of Flamingos stand out.