Sudoeste (2)

Festival Sudoeste brought concerts and a camp together at Herdade da Casa Branca, by Zambujeira do Mar, in Odemira, Alentejo. Música no Coração, owned by Luís Montez, promotes it. The file’s site stays, although in 2024 the bill no longer carried the sponsor’s name. The weekend the papers walk is the concerts of 7 to 10 August 2024. The camp opened on the 3rd. In February 2025 the promoter announced a pause. In February 2026 Montez told Lusa that there would be no festival that summer either and that he believed he would do it again. Those sentences are not a lived weekend.

The first one was in 1997. JPN, telling the pause, puts Marilyn Manson, Blur, Suede, Xutos and Pontapés, Ornatos Violeta and Da Weasel in that year. That is the paper’s list, not a walked night. The encyclopedia page says three days at the start, then four, and five from 2009. The same paragraph puts 2001 in both stretches. Sagres was there at the beginning. The name on the bill then passed through Optimus and TMN. MEO carried it from 2013 to 2023. JN says 2024 returned to the herdade as edition 26, already without that brand. Público calls the 2025 pause the one that would have been the 27th, and says that in 28 years only 2020 was missing, because of the pandemic. NiT, with a source at the promoter, speaks of two pandemic years without income and of a payment plan with the tax authority. Both counts stay side by side.

The camping sheet, with the August 2024 dates, opens the field on the 3rd for anyone with the all-days pass. Showers, toilets, a cash machine, bars, food, lifeguards on the canal, a sink, a shared kitchen, an Intermarché supermarket, light, security and a doctor on site. There is a stage in the camp until the grounds open on the 7th. The canal can be used for swimming, watched. The car next to the tent is paid apart from the person’s pass. Someone who buys one day can add one night in another zone, also apart. The GNR started on the 3rd. Lidador Notícias writes that the national command said the 2024 payment was made on time, and that the Beja command, on the Wednesday before the concerts, said it had not been yet. The same text recalls that the 2022 one was paid close to the 2023 edition.

On 9 August 2024, the third day, BLITZ walks into the herdade. Anitta is the name people are saying. She promised two hours. There are fans dressed for her. The sisters Cláudia and Daniela, from Madeira and raised in England, are there for the first time, on holiday, for that show. The paper’s headline says Anitta and Da Weasel each asked for two hours. A person who had not come for two years says there are fewer people and that they feel less unsafe, and that they came for the atmosphere, not the bill. JN also names, in that edition, Martin Garrix, Bárbara Bandeira and Richie Campbell. The photo is by Sara Matos. M de Música, on 11 August, writes that the organization announced 65,000 people through the herdade, and that Da Weasel came back. They were on the first one. The text recalls a fast entrance by Virgul and, in another year, a stripper on Re-Tratamento. It does not walk the 2024 set song by song.

On 10 August, the fourth day, BLITZ walks the goodbyes. Last swims in the canal. A group plays cards: one from Germany, one from Cyprus, one from Indonesia, one from Spain, one from Trinidad and Tobago, and the Portuguese friend who brought them together. The Dutch one naps in a hammock. They study in Rotterdam. Twenty-four hours by car to Madrid, then Lisbon, then Zambujeira. The psychology student says that the music, for him, is secondary. Someone shaves without a mirror. By the showers there is a water fight.

People sleep in a tent on the herdade, from the 3rd, or with the car beside it if that pass was paid. The Instagram note of the pause, in February 2025, speaks of swims in the canal, friendships in the camp and dancing into the morning, and points to the radio on 100.8 in Lisbon and 102.7 in Porto. Montez told Observador that he had not found a sponsor in time and that it was hard to compete with the free concerts of the town halls in an election year. In May 2026, on the edge of another press conference, he repeated that the festival marked him and that he wants to believe he will be able to do it again. The weekend these papers walk is 7 to 10 August 2024.