“For me, it is evident that what we lived through as a tragedy will not be repeated in the near future," de Sousa told journalists during a visit to the women's prison at Santa Cruz do Bispo in Matosinhos, near Porto.

“I don't even imagine [it] as a scenario this year, next year, in the coming years a repeat of what happened” in the fires in Pedrógão Grande and central Portugal more generally.

The head of state stressed that everyone has learned their lesson where the tragedy of the fires is concerned.

“We have all learned the lesson of what existed and what has happened," he said. "The Portuguese people are lucid, they are attentive, they are intelligent and they are experienced. It is unrepeatable and a good thing too that it is unrepeatable, because having lived through the tragedies we did, twice last year, is enough. There will be no more repetition.”