Red soles in the sunset? Christian Louboutin has chi-chi hotel near Spatia Melides development for the already well-heeled

The Spatia Melides development in Portugal offers a range of luxurious — and very expensive — residences, villas, and estates, starting from €3.99m writes Property Editor Tommy Barker

First villas at Spatia Melides available 2024/2025 via Savills International. Prices start at €3.99m on large sites 

There's far more to Portugal than the Algarve, or the much-loved buzzing capital Lisbon, as a wealthy Irish cognoscenti (and the likes of Christian Louboutin and Philippe Starck among others) seem to have been discovering of late.

There’s a sandy, unspoiled and environmentally sensitive region south of Lisbon, and north of Faro, called Alentejo, including niche communities at spots like Comporta and Melides, linked by 50 kilometres of sand and unobstructed beach, where nature’s beauty is cherished, Atlantic dunes are protected, and development is pared back.

Beaches and dunes define special area of ecological sensitivity

It’s possibly where money whispers, rather than brags: we’re looking at you, Quinta Do Lago, and your gilt-edge bling, and villas at that Irish-controlled exclusive enclave selling at up to and over €20m, ye sun gods.

Spatia Melides will have a 25mX25 metre pool by the owners' club area, as well as individual pools at each villa and residence

Well-heeled and sandal-heeled Irish buyers have already been active buyers in this under-the radar Comporta/Melides Portuguese hotspot, with estate agents Savills International in Dublin and London lining up families looking for sunshine, coastal luxury, and higher-end investments in which to place some of their wealth and who - perhaps -don’t quite feel the ‘Quinta-essential’ need to see and be seen by the sea.

'Red' sole trader Christian Louboutin opened  his boutique hotel, Vermhelho in Melides village after moving from Comporta

Actively developing in this lower-key, more reserved spot under the Spatia banner is Portuguese, family-owned firm Eurosuez, headed by Lisbon-based, second-generation developer Vasco Cunha Mendes and his design-savvy sister Vera: they have completed a hotel and 38 villa scheme — which included a handful of Irish buyers — at their Spatia Comporta project which they started in 2019, and have moved 25kms south now to their second, far larger project to laid-back Melides.

It’s called Spatia Melides (spatia means space) and it delivers on the name in spades, spanning 170 hectares of very low density and low-rise cabanas (30), residences (37), and villas and estates (42) on pristine land, fringed by sections of that 50km beach coastline and dunes, rich in woodland, pines, cork oak trees, olive trees, eucalyptus, and fragrant aromatics — all in sunshine, without the heat excesses of the Mediterranean.

Cork oak trees abound

There’s a full range of options, all high end, with individual sites for the largest villas of up to six hectares of untrammelled woodland, and villas/residences, all with private 12-15 metre outdoor pools, organic farm, owners’ Spatia Club, spa, 25mX25m adults’ pool, dune-topping beach club with pools/restaurant/bar, and full service and 24-hour conciege services.

Spatia means space

And, because of the sensitive nature of the high, fringing dunes, cars won’t be allowed within 800 metres of the dramatic and soaring sandy coastline, so there’s valet/buggy drivers to the water, or owners can use electric or even pedal bikes to add further health benefits in a setting that includes nature walks, watersports, tennis, and padel courts, whilst the wider Comporta/Melides area is setting up to offer up to five premium golf courses, several of the five being works in train elsewhere.

Vast interiors

So, possibly not exactly cheap? Indeed.

Prices for three-bed/315sq m residences on 0.7acre plots with private 15 metre pools start at €3.99m, with the first ready from 2024; larger four-bed villas on 2.5acre plots with landscaped surrounds go from €5.89m and will be ready from, ’25.

That’s when the super-sized, 10-bed villas will also come to completion, priced from €14.7m, according to Savills International Dublin-based agent April Geraghty; developers Eurosuez say these largest options are likely to appeal to US-based buyers looking for a European base on the other side of the Atlantic, for extended family gatherings.

It’s pretty much an elite scheme, deliberately so, but also aiming to make a virtue of the lower-key setting than other prime Portuguese resorts, and for putative buyers who’ll only visit occasionally/seasonally, their home can be rented out by Spatia Melides hotel staff.

Club facilities

The larger community at Comporta, marked out by its unusual rice paddy fields and irrigate locks (Comporta means ‘gate’) was one of those ‘best-kept secrets’ for decades, as a mega wealthy Portuguese banking clan, the Espírito Santo family, controlled vast swathes of the lands marked out by forest, fishing and rice fields, but lost control of their jewel when their bank went, well, bankrupt.

Unspoiled Comporta has a chi-chi reputation

Their 2014 demise freed up large plots for selected developers to deliver sustainable low-density schemes amid farm and forests: among those who came along also included Monaco royalty, artist Andy Warhol, and designer shoe maker Christian Louboutin.

Well-heeled?

Interestingly, of late the celeb cobbler Louboutin — he of the legendary and uber expensive red-soled shoes — has shifted his focus from Comporta to Melides (also favoured apparently by French designer Philippe Starck,) opening a very select boutique hotel in a village hillside courtyard cluster, called Vermelho, with just 13 bedrooms, and common areas (the word 'common' is relative?) full of baroque trim, gilt, mirrors, glitter, and glossy lipstick-red glossy tiles: time to join the red soles in the sunset, perchance?

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