The megalithic monument “is in a very worrying state and at risk of collapse,” the vice-president of the Portuguese Archaeologists Association (AAP), Luís Raposo, said.

The Great Dolmen of Zambujeiro, built at the beginning of the 4th and the middle of the 3rd millennium before Christ, is a large funerary temple.

It is "a very special monument", which "should be classified as of European and international interest,” because it "is the largest dolmen in Portugal and the Iberian Peninsula,” he said.

"It is an old problem, it is not from now,” Raposo said.

“We knew that there was a state of abandonment and of great progressive degradation" adding that it is fundamental to take measures to structurally reinforce" the dolmen.

"After structural reinforcement, it is necessary to think in architectural terms, of public visits and of landscape arrangement, because it is a monument that is visited by thousands of people, despite the condition,” he stressed.

He stressed that the priority should include establishing an understanding with the owner of the land where the dolmen is located, adding that, otherwise, it becomes "difficult to have any public investment" in the monument.