In 1988 the Portuguese ambassador Carlos Empis Wemans, Portugal’s representative in the International Comission of Portuguese-Spanish Limits, stated in the Portuguese newspaper "Diário de Lisboa":

        «Portugal has never officially recognized the situation. From a legal point of view, Olivenza is still ours. So, when answering occasional contacts from Spain about problems in the region, we always say that  Olivenza is Portuguese de jure».

         More recently, this position was reasserted when the project of reconstruction of the Olivenza Bridge was under discussion. The Olivenza Bridge was built by the Portuguese King Manuel I (1495-1521) and was destroyed in 1709 during the War of Succession. This bridge has remained impassable until today, making it difficult to travel between Elvas and Olivenza over the Guadiana River, which is nowadays the de facto border, but not the juridically acceptable border between Spain and Portugal.
        In the Iberian Summit in 1990, the Portuguese Prime Minister Cavaco Silva reached an agreement about the reconstruction of the Olivenza Bridge as a cross-border enterprise, as previously negotiated by the Portuguese and Spanish Secretaries of State for Regional Planning, Isabel Mota and Jose Borrell respectively. 
         Four years later, in the beginning of March, the Portuguese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, presided by Durão Barroso, blocked the agreement, thus preventing the project from being carried out. Ambassador Pinto Soares, the Portuguese representative in the International Commission of Limits, refused to discuss the file on the bridge, stating that «the Portuguese State cannot get involved in any project that involves the recognition of the borderlines in a place on which there is no consensus». «To participate in such an enterprise», expained a person from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the Portuguese newspaper "Público", «would mean that Portugal recognizes Spanish sovereignty over Olivenza».

         The astute way in which Spain wanted to achieve recognition of its illegal occupation of Olivenza turned into a clear affirmation of Portugal’s rights to the territory. As the Portuguese administration considers that the Olivenza territory is part of its space of sovereignty, the Portuguese Ministry of Foreign Affairs imposed the building of the bridge as an exclusively Portuguese enterprise, rather than a joint, cross-border enterprise. The peninsular states like to deal with the Question of Olivenza in a silent way; that is why the final agreement was negotiated in the Iberian Summit of November 1994, with no great echoes of the dissension and susceptibilities involved reaching the mass media.
         The most recent official assertion that Olivenza is part of the Portuguese territory occurred in 1995 in the context of the project of the Alqueva Dam, which will submerge about 2,400 hectares of land in the Spanish municipalities of Badajoz, Cheles, Alconchel and Villanueva del Fresno, plus approximately 1,000 hectares in Olivenza.
       In the negotiations about this subject conducted by the two peninsular states, the Portuguese authorities, including the Ministry of the Environment and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, sent to Madrid, in March 1995, a detailed study of the consequences that the project will have on Spanish territory. As Portugal does not recognize Spanish sovereignty over Olivenza, information on this legally Portuguese territory was not included in the 13 volumes of the study sent to the Spanish authorities. Only one week later, in deference to the Spaniards and to simplify technical aspects, did our administration send information in which data on Olivenza was included. But, in order to emphasise the Portuguese position, the study was entitled ‘Territory of Spain and Olivenza’, which clearly demonstrates that the Portuguese administration does not consider Olivenza as part of Spain.