A pig named
Lola
gobbles up apricots from the hand of a lanky young man.
“This is not a slaughter, far from it.
She is ours for life, and she has to lead as good a life as a servant, ”warns his grandfather with a tender gesture.
She is Toni Costa and she has been living in this whitewashed Ibizan house in Sa Canal since she was 16 years old, a group of one- or two-story dwellings that barely reach a village, but that in other decades served to house families who worked for the company Salinera de Ibiza, in charge of the exploitation of salt on the island.
“I've lived here all my life and when I retired, they offered me to stay for rent.
Luckily I accepted”, he smiles.
He glances at her wife, Catalina Cardona, who is arguing with her mother about the lunch they will serve the family this Saturday morning.
There will be five generations of Ibizans at the table,
almost a miracle considering the extreme mutation to which this piece of Balearic land has been subjected in recent decades.
“When I started at the salt mine in 1963 we were 600 workers.
Today there will be about 15 left. Everything else is machines”, he ditches with nostalgia.
Toni Costa and his wife, Catalina, pose with their grandson Adrián Antonio, his grandmother Catalina and the pet they both share in Sa Canal, a sow called 'Lola'.
Anna Huix
Being on his farm implies forgetting that it is the summer of 2022, but the pounding rhythm that springs up 300 meters away is responsible for breaking the spell.
It is the music of the popular beach bar Beso Beach, where groups of boys and girls dance to the rhythm of Cher or Boney M. passed through an electronic filter while they taste lobster paella or margaritas.
The individual account will not come out for less than 80 euros, a price that Toni or Catalina will not have paid in their seven decades of life on the island.
But none of them seem irritated by the matter.
“That is our essence: we welcome you and, if you respect us, we let you do it.
As simple as that".
The identity of Ibiza as a place of passage is not a new matter.
Already in 1915, the American poet Wallace Stevens spoke of "the melodious island where the spirits return home", although many of those who visited the Pitiusa island did so to stay.
Founded by the Carthaginians, it was dominated by Phoenicians, Greeks, pirates and Muslims.
But in the last century, the peoples who have laid waste to their land are others with more pagan names, from
hippies
to tycoons, through hotel hounds and two-legged camels.
“Everyone has passed through here.
But, if Ibiza was respected before, now the only thing that is respected is money”, says the artist Antonio Villanueva.
Born in Toledo, he arrived at the end of the sixties, and next September he will be 82 years old in the industrial warehouse that he has transformed into a workshop and home in the port of the capital.
Here he stores paintings and sculptures from his years of work, half-empty bottles of alcohol and unlit cigarettes that suggest the habits of a man of everything.
"The history of Ibiza is also that of the world, because this island is a mirror of our own society," he says.
As he pulls prints of Picasso and Cocteau out of a chest of drawers, he argues that part of the mystery is the fault of stories that never took place.
“It's one thing for me to tell you that I went to Sandy's Bar and was a friend of Terry Thomas, Nigel Davenport or Laurence Olivier, and another thing is for me to tell you that we went to Pacha, a place that none of them ever set foot on.
Half of the legends are lies because they are interesting to elevate the local night, but the truth is that the reality of the seventies was much more cultural and interesting than what the books say”.
Entrance door to one of the farms of Sa Canal, a small village in Ses Salines where the workers of the Salinera de Ibiza company, in charge of the exploitation of salt on the island, lived years ago.
Anna Huix
One of those legends of which there is evidence is that of the 41st birthday that Freddie Mercury —to whom Villanueva dedicates a sculpture in his workshop— celebrated in a
suite
at the Pikes Hotel, located on the road that leads to the municipality of Sant Antoni de Portmany , Mecca of European
low cost
tourism
.
At the Pikes there is also a high percentage of international visitors, but the price is high enough that only a few can afford to rent the room that the leader of Queen made his own in September 1987. The bill amounted to 350 bottles of champagne Möet & Chandon and 232 broken glasses.
"To this day, we continue to celebrate in his honor," concedes Dawn Hindle.
The current co-owner of the Pikes founded the Manumission club in Manchester in 1994 and, despite managing to transform it into a musical temple in just a couple of years, she knew that Ibiza could host a more explosive version when she fell in love with it during a visit.
Her home would end up being the already closed Privilege room, with a capacity of 10,000 people and a
line up
of DJs that ranged from Paul Oakenfold to Digitalism.
“The biggest ones could charge up to 100,000 euros per night, and it ended up becoming too aggressive a business for me.
I decided to change the scene”, he recounts.
That change materialized in the Ibiza Rocks hotels and the peculiar Pikes, acquired in 2011 together with her then-husband, Adam McKay, and from which she manages the legacy of its founder, the womanizer Tony Pike, who died in 2019. “He made this place a temple of freedom and my intention is that this does not change and that the rhythm does not stop”.
Judging by the pool filled with music, conversations in English, and walls covered with photos of regulars like Grace Jones, Julio Iglesias, and Boy George, this island temple—now painted bubblegum pink—looks like it has many years ahead of it.
The Toledo artist Antonio Villanueva has lived as many Ibizas as his work has decades.
Here, he poses in his home studio, an imposing industrial warehouse in the port of the Ibizan capital.
Anna Huix
That same muscle is exhibited by another institution on the island, the Pacha nightclub, which this Sunday night will receive some 5,000 people to listen to the Bosnian Mladen Solomun, at the DJ table together with the Peruvian Sofia Kourtesis.
"We are up to the flag and we are only in May," says Paloma Tur, the group's press officer, arguing that the clubs have opened a month earlier this year due to the high demand.
VIP tables range between 600 and 25,000 euros, and its CEO, Sanjay Nandi, predicts an unprecedented summer, more buoyant than pre-pandemic levels: "After two summers of closure, there is rising demand and a spirit of making up for lost time,” he says.
Outside, a row of young people like the Germans Leonie Sommer and Jade Übach wait in line to pay the 70 euros that the ticket costs.
Inside awaits a cocktail party as impossible as the island itself: characters in wide-brimmed hats bathed in glitter mingle with men in suits around a table with a giant bottle of vodka, and designer handbags mingle with tight lycra jumpsuits. or velvet.
"Balance is not impossible: do not judge and you will not be judged," suggests a man in sunglasses who jumps on the dance floor.
A taxi driver unconsciously replies to him, already in his last service before returning home: “I don't know if it's judging, but there is a type of tourism that doesn't bother to know anything about our island, much less about us.
It is a profile of a visitor who saves a few thousand euros to come here, believing himself to be the king of mambo and treating this as a riding school that he could have without leaving his country.
That Ibiza hooks I have it clear,
The old Mar y Sal hostel is today a young and affordable project in the Las Salinas area.
Anna Huix
Another type of tourism, of course, can be sensed in the northern part of Ibiza, in Portinatx, where the Six Senses hotel —opened in July 2021— seems oblivious to the endless nights and the chemical effects on certain pilgrims.
Located in front of Cala Xarraca, it shares with it an imposing sunset and offers a holiday within the reach of a privileged few.
"We invite our guests to spend quality time in a private environment while enjoying a unique context," says its general manager, David Arraya.
In the corridors that connect the Israeli restaurant Ha Salon with a secret bar, where well-known faces such as the model Arizona Muse or the singer Chanel Terrero stroll without looking at the curious, one senses the richness offered by its rooms (from 1,200 euros per night).
With a somewhat more social focus, The Standard hotel, a subsidiary of the homonymous chain, landed in May with a big party that included a performance by Róisín Murphy.
Located in the old Serra cinema on Vara de Rey street, it will be the most sought-after place in the capital until September with its rooftop or its Jara restaurant.
“We want to be an unbeatable hotel, but also a meeting point for tourists and Ibizans, where you can simply enter to have a drink or watch live music.
Until now, what has surprised me the most is the hunger that the island had for a place like the Standard”, explains the CEO of the group, Amber Asher.
Various dishes are distributed on a table at the Can Portmany estate, adapted for one of the experiences that Australian Liam Aldous devises from his Colourfeel project.
Anna Huix
Hungry is a word that will be on the lips of more visitors to the island this weekend.
One of them is the Australian journalist Liam Aldous, who landed tired of the Madrid rhythm and settled in a small wooden house until he gave shape to his project, ColourFeel, which today organizes a spiritual retreat with the Japanese footwear firm Suicoke in a farm near Sant Antoni.
“After the crisis of the pandemic, a real collective trauma arrived that has left us all lost and in search of a direction.
And then many people come looking for answers.
But this island, more than a magnet, is a mirror: we think we are attracted by it, but we do it in search of ourselves.
That is why there are those who arrive and break, and those who return reconciled with themselves.
There is no middle ground: Ibiza embraces you or expels you”,
he murmurs as a group of 25 people gathers around a long table to eat and exchange knots and dilemmas.
Among them is Uossy Atytalla, who defines herself as a "psycho-spiritual therapist" and exercises "human design" tactics on her guests, a system of self-knowledge founded on the island in 1987. According to her, in Ibiza the objective of the trip is Secondary: "There are those who come to unload dancing and those who do it to meditate, but they are two extremes of the same: the desire to be free from pain".
The founder of Colourfeel, Liam Aldous, with the artist Cuentos Rosales, the Ayurveda expert Tania Herrero, the writer Alexcia Panay and the psychotherapist Uossy Atytalla.
They all pose at the Tierra Iris estate for a full day of spiritual sessions.
Anna Huix
Between meditation sessions, pools merged with the Mediterranean and party marathons, the greatest risk is that one passes through Ibiza as if he had done so through any other holiday destination.
“We cannot forget that there are those of us who live on the island throughout the year, and that this is a land full of possibilities beyond tourism.”
The speaker is Pepita Costa, director of the Can Marines Integrated Vocational Training Center, where courses in landscaping, agriculture, navigation and fishing are offered.
“We have a range of students from 14 to 40 years old, age is the least important.
The important thing is to fight for an economy that does not depend so much on the seasonal factor and transmit the value of life in the countryside, which is sacrificed, but very grateful because you live connected to nature”.
The peasant Pepe Torres agrees with her,
who has been fishing in Sa Caleta all his life and selling the fish to the restaurant of the same name on the neighboring beach of Es Bol Nou.
"My father spent 40 years of his life doing the same thing, working and sleeping in that same bed," he says, pointing to the interior of one of the boathouses that so many postcards show.
Torres knows all the families in this row of cubicles and laughs at the question of being able to rent them on portals like Booking or Airbnb.
“These booths are our best heritage, and there is no five-star hotel that can beat it,” he jokes.
"They have offered me hundreds of euros to take a lobster to a posh beach bar, but I am a man of customs and I only work with those who respect my values," he says with a serious expression.
Spanglish
.
"I don't want to get rich selling my land and having to leave, I want anyone to be able to visit us while I can continue living humbly."
The Brazilian artist Samuel de Saboia, in charge of housing with his works of art the ephemeral restaurant that El Silencio opens during the summer in Cala Molí.
Anna Huix
Ana Escandell wears the peasant outfit, full of entrepreneurs, in front of the newly opened Standard hotel on Paseo Vara de Rey.
Anna Huix
It is a similar objective to the one planned by the Mar y Sal hostel, renovated for this year on Ses Salines beach.
"We don't want to be a place with an astronomical menu, the idea is to serve good food at a reasonable price," says chef Quim Coll, from restaurants such as Zuberoa, Comerç 24 or the now-defunct 4 amb 5 Mujades in Barcelona.
“We are not the only ones: there are farms that are repopulating some land with fruit trees and vegetables, and agrotourisms that only serve what they plant.
It is a good starting point to reconcile tradition and growth”, he assures.
Sergio Sancho, founder of the Madrid art fair Urvanity, agrees with him.
Last year he visited the exhibition that La Nave Salinas dedicated to the painter Rafa Macarrón.
This summer he is back with CAN Art Fair, a contemporary art fair where some thirty galleries from all over the world participate.
"With the artistic tradition that Ibiza has always had, it seemed strange to me that there wasn't an art fair in summer, so I got down to work," he argues.
He supports his thesis on the tenth anniversary of Parra & Romero, the Ses Dotze Naus residence and the Also gallery (in Santa Eulalia) or the new proposal for La Nave, promoted by the Colombian collector Lio Malca.
“Entrance is free and you can access it from the beach itself, barefoot or in a towel.
If that is not a good claim, let's hope that Eva's work speaks for itself ",
jokes its director, Alejandra Navarro.
Quite a long way are those seventies in which art galleries such as Ivan Spence and Carl van der Voort, in Dalt Vila, or El Mensajero and Es Molí (further north) opened at the same rate as restaurants or beach bars.
The director of La Nave Salinas, Alejandra Navarro.
Anna Huix
That change is the only constant in the lives of Ibizans is well known by jeweler Elisa Pomar.
This descendant of artisans —she says that her great-grandfather sold jewels to King Alfonso XIII for her lovers— she designs pieces starting from silver, gold or coral, adapted to a current design.
“This jewel is the result of all the towns that have passed through the island.
Each one added an element and didn't take away from what came before, so it's also a good history book,” she explains.
One of her workers, Ana Escandell, acts as an improvised model, putting on the 24 rings that young people used to give to her girlfriends.
Her mother, Catalina, adjusts the dozens of gold pendants on the peasant dress with 12 petticoats with which Escandell dances, sometimes in her popular colla, Sa Bodega,
The sun sets in front of the pool at the Six Senses hotel.
Anna Huix
The impossible mix that hosts this miracle island is not, at all, a utopia far from reality, as the artist Antonio Villanueva argues: “Here today we live at full speed on the poverty line.
Pills are devoured or inner peace is sought.
And if that is a problem, it is not exclusive to Ibiza: it is the world that has it”.
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