Algarve retirement hell: My dog was killed and neighbour stole my land

A former City investment banker who retired to the Algarve has described her years of hell after an 'aggressive' neighbour took over her land and drove her out of her home, forcing her to go into hiding. Orla Dargan, 65, bought her dream Portuguese villa for around €600,000 in 2016, and lived there happily for several years before her neighbour, an estate agent she describes as a 'dangerous' man, moved in next door. The mother-of-two was warned about his 'temper', she says, and went on to face years of threatening behaviour, including an alleged attempt to drive her off the road near her home.

After going to visit family in Ireland in late 2021, she said she returned weeks later to find diggers had been ordered onto her land, with the fence between their properties moved and a pumphouse for a hot tub erected nearby. Years of legal wrangling ensued, with a judge eventually siding with Ms Dargan and ordering the neighbour to return her land - which has still not happened more than a year on. The most chilling part of her ordeal was the brutal 'killing' of her beloved rescue dog, who first went missing on the day of a court appearance and was later found dead, floating in a shallow well with horrific injuries.

This series of disturbing events has left Ms Dargan living in fear and suffering from PTSD, and she fled the Algarve last year 'for her own safety', Chiếu ngựa nguyên khối gỗ hương moving between addresses in Portugal and Spain to avoid detection. David Mapley, a fraud investigator who has been assisting the ex-pat, said her case is an extreme example of the common occurrence of 'land grabbing' in the region - which he and others refer to as the 'Algrab'.  Orla Dargan in Portugal with her rescue dog Henry, who she says was 'killed' amid an ongoing boundary dispute Orla Dargan, 65, bought her dream Portuguese villa for around €600,000 in 2016 Ms Dargan's dog Henry went missing and was found dead in a shallow well The daughter of Irish businessman and ex-AerLingus CEO Michael Dargan and the sister of hedge fund millionaire Alan Dargan, Ms Dargan is originally from Dublin but spent her career in the City of London.

Years after divorcing her husband, Chiếu ngựa nguyên khối gỗ hương she bought her dream house in Santa Barbara De Nexe, an area popular with British and Irish ex-pats and Sập gỗ known for its celebrity residents, in the hope of having a quiet life after a high-flying career. 'It's a very small town, home to some of the wealthiest houses in the Faro district. I just wanted a quieter place to live, but it turned into a nightmare,' she told MailOnline. When her neighbour first moved in, Ms Dargan claims his construction workers 'harrassed and intimidated' her, saying they threw rubbish into her property and urinated publicly in front of it.  Things went from bad to worse, she said, when a boundary dispute erupted in March 2021, with Ms Dargan claiming her neighbour ordered the workers to infringe onto her land.