this is still kind of stressing me out a bit. was flying near sintra last week, had my a2coc and everything registered through anac which is the portuguese authority, thought i was completely fine. cop came over and was pretty serious about it, said something about the historic site restrictions but my portuguese is basically zero and his english wasnt great so we were kind of just staring at each other for a bit.

he didnt confiscate anything and eventually left but i honestly still dont know if i was actually in the wrong or if he just wasnt sure either. the anac drone map showed green for that area but maybe sintra has its own local rules on top of that? i've heard some UNESCO sites have extra restrictions that arent always on the official apps.

anyway ended up not flying the rest of the trip because i was too nervous. which was frustrating because the weather was perfect.

yeah sintra is tricky, the palaces and the whole cultural landscape area have extra protections that dont always show up in the standard airspace apps. i think its a combination of anac rules plus specific heritage site regulations. i made a similar mistake near evora a few years back, everything looked fine on the map but aparently there are ground level restrictions around certain monuments that are separate from the airspace stuff

honestly this is why i always email the local tourism board or municipality before i fly anywhere with historical significance on a trip. annoying extra step but ive had zero issues since i started doing it. also screenshot everything in case you need to show someone on the spot, green on an app doesnt always tell the whole story