That's Algarve for you. It just straight away stopped having Portuguese people. The entire south coast of Portugal is now a British colony.
Except the retirees, people only go there in the summer so, by May, "business" owners need to hire like 50k persons willing to do crap jobs and by September they all get fired. Ofc that people aren't really willing to do that so we get the added bonus of bosses going to journals to complain that "there isn't a shortage of jobs, it is the Portuguese that do not want to work". What a dream job, to live in a cardboard box to appease Brits looking for the cheapest nice-place.
Whatever happened there that was Portuguese is no more.
Well, those massive parking lots are a thing because 100% of the attendance comes in a car.
It happens that in European cities, the majority of people go to those mega-events events by public transit or Taxi.
Are you going to put parking lots just to burn up space? If that was the case, then no need for asphalt, trees absorb sound better than asphalt.
Lisbon's big arena is in a fast to reach part of the city that is surrounded by a lot of stores and offices and basically no housing. That's the way to do it. Is a 3 minute walk away from the subway.