Only recently, I wrote an article headed “Portugal for beginners” where I held my hands up and freely declared that, despite twenty or more years of exploring this beautiful land, I'm still green behind the gills. But that didn't stop someone commenting: “Grrr, you know nothing about Portugal, mate”. This is why I feel that I might be sticking my neck out with this next piece. Anyway, here goes.

There appears to be a new moral hierarchy surrounding expatriate Portugal. At the very top, glowing like a hemp-woven halo in the Iberian sunshine, stand the Off-Gridders. Barefoot, bearded and quite possibly called Rowan, these guys will toil in the soil whilst a partner, possibly named Sky, nurtures a tiny infant called Fauna.

Then, beneath Rowan and family, splashing about in chlorinated disgrace will be the Expat villa owners of Cascais and the Algarve. According to the gospel of eco-virtue, we’re meant to applaud the first and secretly sneer at the latter.

Off-Grid Evangelists will declare that they've “opted out of the system,” whilst posting filtered sunset photographs to Instagram via a satellite router, powered by solar panels made in China and shipped halfway across the globe in a container the size of Chatsworth. They often live in a yurt, not a house or a cottage. A yurt that sits upon a plot of semi-legal land bought from a local chap called Rui. There are compost loos, rainwater harvesting and goats with names such as Fern and Solstice. This is the kind of existence that's hailed as morally superior to that of someone who has bought a four-bedroom villa in Cascais.

Let’s examine all this in a little more detail. Firstly, our Cascais “villains” wake up in solid structures built to seismic code. Their plumbing works, as does their electricity. The villa roof doesn't flap about in the wind like a distressed sail each time it blows a hoolie, because they employ local tradespeople to fastidiously maintain their homes. They also pay property tax, therefore contributing to the local economy. They probably buy local wine at local restaurants, instead of fermenting something unspeakable in a grubby demijohn behind the chicken coop. Yet ‘Villa Man” is somehow portrayed as being the shallow one.

Meanwhile, our off-grid heroes siphon groundwater through a DIY filtration system involving charcoal, sand and considerable optimism. They insist that their lives have “minimal environmental impact.” This, while driving a 1988 Land Rover Discovery that emits more particulates than a Victorian factory chimney. But that's fine, because vibes matter.

There’s something deeply amusing about the way “intent” trumps “impact” these days. If you intend to live simply, it doesn’t seem to matter that your solar batteries require rare-earth minerals mined in Mongolia. If you intend to be “closer to nature”, it doesn’t seem to matter that you’ve imported a Scandinavian wood-burning stove that’s probably as well-travelled as Vasco da Gama.

The real issue, of course, is aesthetic virtue. Off-grid living looks wholesome. A linen shirt flapping in the breeze, a basket of sun-ripened tomatoes, a lazy old Labrador asleep under an olive tree. It’s evocative, and it just screams “authenticity.” A villa in the Algarve, on the other hand? Well, that just screams “glossy estate agent brochure” and looks about as authentic as a Cataplana in a Brummie curry house.

Credits: Unsplash; Author: Bettina Heinrich ;

The irony is that the people of Portugal are generally pragmatic about all this stuff. The chap who runs the village café doesn't really care whether we spend our days fermenting kombucha in a yurt or sip vinho verde beside our private infinity pools. He just likes to see us when we enjoy our daily coffee with him as we attempt a bit of pigeon Portuguese while he tries his best to keep a straight face.

Let’s not pretend that off-grid life is some bucolic utopia of self-sufficiency. In summer, when temperatures reach similar values to those on the surface of Mercury, that charming yurt becomes a convection oven. In winter, when Atlantic storms roll in sideways, the sustainable canvas walls test the very definition of “waterproof.” Meanwhile, in Cascais, someone presses a button; underfloor heating activates, and floodlights bathe ornate gardens in surreal LED hues.

It’s easy for Off-Gridders to romanticise “hardship” when they're fit and young and have private means at their disposal to retreat if push ever comes to shove. Many such eco-pioneers aren't destitute peasants; they're former marketing consultants from Surrey with substantial savings accounts and robust contingency plans. Should the great goat experiment fail, there’s always a £29 flight back to Gatwick. The villa buyer, by contrast, is treated as if he has committed a cultural crime. He’s “gentrifying.” He’s “colonising leisure space.” He’s just “part of the problem.”

For centuries, Portugal traded with the world. It welcomed explorers, merchants and architects. It built cities of tiles, terraces and unapologetic beauty. To suggest that anyone purchasing a well-built house by the sea is somehow less ethical than those who hammer together a pallet-wood shed somewhere in the Alentejo is surely both as absurd as it is disingenuous.

Here’s a heretical thought for you. Both lifestyles are actually choices. Living off-grid doesn’t automatically imply wisdom, but owning a villa doesn't automatically erase it either. One man grows courgettes whilst another grows his investment portfolio. Both pay IVA at the supermarket. Yet the cultural script insists we must applaud the rougher aesthetic?

There seems to be a certain smugness to it all. Performative minimalism, the Instagram captions about “simple living” posted from €1500 smartphones, the implied logic that anyone who enjoys creature comforts is spiritually compromised. But comfort isn't a crime. Civilisation is, in fact, the steady improvement of comfort. We invented roofs because rain is bloody annoying. We invented swimming pools because it’s nice to float about with a glass of something cold while the sun goes down over the Atlantic.

If that makes one less virtuous than someone milking a goat at dawn, then so be it.

The truly tiresome part is the competitive righteousness. The idea that lifestyle is a ladder and we must constantly check who is standing on the uppermost rungs.

Perhaps real virtues lie not in architecture but in attitude. Do we respect the land? Do we contribute? Do we integrate rather than impose? Do we treat our neighbours (whether they live in yurts or villas) with the same common decency? All that seems rather more important than poo-hooing those with different outlooks?

So by all means, if folk want to live off-grid in rural Portugal whilst simultaneously chasing chickens and sunsets, then go for it! At the end of the day, when I'm in Portugal, I don’t really care about virtue signalling; I simply care about seeing the sun rising over terracotta roofs and cork trees. I care about the sound of huge Atlantic waves smashing against majestic cliffs. All these things carry on, blissfully indifferent to whether we're composting or cannonballing. The infinity pool and the yurt aren't enemies; they're simply two ways of enjoying the same rather spectacular patch of earth.