The woman got into trouble in rough waters while swimming in the Alentejo region

A British man and woman have drowned off a beach in south-west Portugal after they got into difficulty while swimming.

Rescue services were alerted at around 2.30pm on Sunday when a 34-year-old man tried to rescue a woman, 33, from the sea at Praia da Zambujeira do Mar in the Alentejo region after she got into difficulty.

A group of surfers then tried to save the pair, who have not been named, but when they were finally brought ashore from the inaccessible beach by helicopter, rescue services were unable to revive them. Their bodies were taken by a Portuguese air force helicopter to the nearby town of Beja.

According to a local police source “the woman was clinging to a rock and in trouble and the man – I don’t know what his relationship was to her – was helping her but as they tried to return to the beach they disappeared”.

Rui Pedro Filipe, the commander of the local maritime police, said that as the swimming season ended on 15 September there were no lifeguards on duty.

Filipe said he believed the pair were in Portugal on holiday with a group of friends, although he did not know if they were also on the beach at the time.

A lifeboat rushed to the scene while police also headed to the beach by land. Filipe said that firemen who arrived at the scene were unable to resuscitate the victims.

He described the conditions in the sea at the time as “a little bit rough” and said postmortems on the bodies were likely to be carried out on Monday.

The popular beach at Zambujeira Do Mar is in August the venue for the Festa do Sudoeste, one of the biggest music festivals in Portugal which has featured headliners including Madness, The Prodigy and Daft Punk.