Should I feel guilty about my holiday to Spain?

While we are now all rightly more conscious about our decisions in the end I felt I deserved a break, writes Janet Street-Porter

The PM recently returned from Marbella in southern Spain (iStockphoto)

Star Trek legend William Shatner has made a journey into space at the age of 90, and the prime minister, Boris Johnson, and I have both been to Spain for a break.

Two of the trips have caused upset in some quarters. Prince William was quick to let it be known that he was not a fan of space tourism. Speaking to the BBC to promote the Earthshot awards for environmental awareness, he remarked that the world’s largest brains should focus on saving this planet, rather than trying to find the next place to go and live.

Johnson has been criticised for taking a holiday when turkeys are in short supply, and thousands of pigs may have to be unnecessarily slaughtered. Plus the £20 uplift to universal credit has just come to an end, and the Chancellor shows no sign of re-introducing any financial help for the poor even though experts reckon retail prices and fuel bills will rise this winter.

Heating or eating may be the choice for some.

I can see why the prime minister’s break in a luxury villa (lent by a millionaire pal who just happens to be environment minister) on a big estate outside Marbella might seem crass.

That aside, it seems churlish to carp, because there’s never a good time for any prime minister to go on holiday. If there wasn’t a shortage of HGV drivers, butchers, and vegetable pickers, it would have been something else. The photograph of Johnson emulating his hero Winston Churchill, standing at an easel with paintbrush in hand, is the one aspect to this jaunt I find a hard to stomach. Surely Boris knew that he would be photographed on holiday and it seems rather stage-managed. (A bit like those macho jogging photos with his personal trainer and the cute dog.)

As I have just spent a week in the same rural area of Spain, I can confirm it’s restorative powers. There’s nothing more calming than waking to birdsong, going for a sunrise walk up a hillside in old shorts and eating sun-ripened tomatoes squashed on lovely bread with great olive oil.

For twenty months, I have been entombed in the UK, trapped by Covid and our fiendishly complicated travel restrictions. There’s been a couple of sorties to Scotland for fishing and hiking, but – like so many – I’ve yearned to loaf about in the Mediterranean, eating fabulous food and drinking the local vino.

It took a lot of courage – such has been the impact of the Sage doom merchants – to book a flight, don a mask for the entire time and fill in endless forms. Not to mention the stressful experience of losing my passport and discovering that replacing it would be a costly and lengthy process. In the end , it arrived just a day before departure.

After all the worries and the horror stories, the arrival in Malaga was completely painless. I was waved through passport control, followed a short queue for the health check and soon I was driving to the mountains north of Ronda and a small hotel on a working farm.

I soon discovered that the Spanish are far more concerned about mask-wearing than the inhabitants of my neighbourhood in London. As for any environmental concerns about unnecessary travel, the owners of my holiday destination seemed to be making a huge effort to limit the negative impact of their hotel. A team of young chefs were serving predominantly vegetarian fare, which they had grown or sourced locally. The farm employed 300 workers and 30 ran the hotel, in a sparsely populated area of natural beauty. The buildings were old and sensitively restored.

I was reasonably comfortable with my choice – thanks to Greta Thunberg we now think carefully about whether we should be travelling at all. But in the end, I felt, like Boris, I deserved a break.

It’s politicians – rather than the public – who seem guilty of making decisions that not only damage the environment, but could negatively impact on our health. Have they learned nothing from Covid? The arrival of up to 25,000 delegates from 200 countries in Glasgow on 31 October for the Cop26 climate conference could trigger a health catastrophe in the central belt of Scotland, at a time when infections are still high. How can this huge event can be justified? Covid taught us that much can be achieved via Zoom, but perhaps politicians are reluctant to admit that photo opportunities are the real reason for this bun fight.

Should all travel – never mind a trip into space – be reconsidered in the light of Covid and climate change?

William Shatner's headline-grabbing trip was totally unnecessary, and can’t be justified on any level. It makes a mockery of the notion of saving our planet, as the famous and super-rich turn to space as their new holiday destination. A band of wealthy entrepreneurs (Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson) are jockeying for position to become space tour operators, tapping into our desperate need for a memorable “experience” – whatever it takes.

It cost Jeff Bezos $5.5bn to develop his Blue Origin spacecraft, which raised him 60 miles above the earth for around four minutes. The latest 10 minute 17 second trip took Shatner and two paying passengers 66.51 miles upwards, reducing the actor to tears. Bezos justifies the cost, saying he is aiming to develop a lunar landing module as well as cheap vehicles to move more of us into space and away from earth. SpaceX, owned by Elon Musk, plans up to six private flights a year. The next trip will carry three businessmen who have paid around $55m each.

Cop26 won’t help the environment beyond a series of grandiose mission statements, and it being in person might harm citizens’ health by encouraging unnecessary travel. As for the space beyond our planet, who will prevent another environmental disaster? It won’t be the rich people desperate for the ultimate in one-upmanship.