At seven o'clock in the afternoon on a Sunday at the end of May, the appearance of the terrace of the Kumharas, Ibizan classic in Sant Antoni that has been open for 26 years, is somewhat desolate. Just two tables occupied of the twenty that Miguel Costa (Ibiza, 51 years old), its owner and founder, strategically locates facing the sea on this rocky beach. We have been told that this space is one of the most fashionable on the island to observe the sunset. But we've still been lied to. We take a walk, somewhat dejected, through Sant Antoni, among the remains of the business built around the English tourism of drunkenness and breakfast with sausages and the new businesses that seem to want to turn the area into a tribute to South Beach. With this type of changes, data such as that, last year, the 3.4 million tourists who, according to the INE, arrived on the island meant an increase of 8.3% compared to 2019 (pre-pandemic), but spent 91.8% more in Ibiza.
We come back an hour later. Today, the iphone gives sunset at 21.04. There are still about 70 minutes left. "What? Amazing, isn't it?", Costa receives us. The place is full to overflowing, there is a DJ and the waiters are busy serving the orders at full speed. "You have to have a lot of people working and impeccable logistics for this to work. It's about two hours around sunset where we have this bursting," continues the owner. "I've tried to open in the morning, with yoga classes, workshops for children..., but it doesn't compensate me. People want this. I try not to be too expensive, I give the mojitos at 10 euros, which for the island is reasonable, and I am interested in the public being like that, as you see, varied: workers, islanders, guiris, families. I've been offered to do preparties for nightclubs, but I've never wanted to. It's the sunset that everyone likes," he concludes, pointing to the sun, which is rushing at full speed over the Mediterranean. The music goes down, there is almost silence (some hint of applause as in the landings of commercial flights) and the sunset number 149 of 2023 concludes. Lower the curtain, turn up the music.
"I didn't turn down the music," Dj Grayswan, a 50-year-old Englishman whose real name is Grayson Shipley, tells us a couple of days later. He was behind the dishes when we visited Kumharas. "When I play at sunset I take into account the time and also the place. In the case of Kumharas, the session was a bit more ethnic and festive than in other places, because the clientele is like that," he says. The sunsets have their soundtrack, and since Café del Mar amortized this reality with a series of releases, almost always the sounds have revolved around deep house, a style of dance, but little, something introspective and capable of satisfying both those who start the night and those who end the day. "Do you know what happened?" interrupts Shipley, who has been left thinking that we had lowered the volume to keep pace with the sunset. "I put on a vocal theme, and its frequencies are higher and make the sound limiters jump. The island is full of them." What a disappointment.
- Sunset in Khumaras, in Ibiza.Jordi Adrià
The pineal gland is a small structure located in the diencephalon. Its function is to regulate the heart rate in the sleep-wake cycle. The gland sleeps during the day, but at dusk, when sunlight decreases, it activates and begins to produce melatonin, a hormone that lowers levels of cortisol, the stress hormone. Thus, sunset is the time when the body experiences the change from day to night functions and the soul becomes serene. "It is the passage from stress and activity to relaxation and rest," says the clinical psychologist and director of the Hortaleza 73 center (Madrid), Violeta Alcocer. "Sunset is the perfect setting to accompany these neurochemical changes with a series of additional sensory stimuli that increase the feeling of relaxation and well-being. A natural spectacle that fits perfectly with the impact of sunset on our brain and enhances its effect." Beyond the physiological, the sunset also comes with a metaphorical charge. It contains a scientific reality, but also provides a not inconsiderable humanistic value. "It is change, replacement, an end that at the same time is a beginning. There the daytime worries and obligations are left behind on one side and the night is given, giving us permission to retire, if we wish, or surrender to enjoyment, "says Alcocer, who also sees in the sunsets a way to remind us of the functioning of the cosmos and what our place is in it. Something big to warn us, day in and day out, that we are something very small. "It puts us in perspective before the magnitude of our problems, the relative importance of our existence or the incessant evolution of life," explains the psychologist.
DJ Grayswan, at work during a Sunday evening in Kumharas, in Sant Antoni, Ibiza.Jordi Adrià
A physical distance of barely 100 meters, but an almost unfathomable metaphysical interval separates Sunset Ashram and Chiringuito Cala Escondida in Ibiza's Cala Comte. The first is a perfectly choreographed place, with a restaurant, shop and sun loungers for rent oriented to the magnificent sunset that can be observed from this corner of the island. The second is a beach bar next to what was a nudist beach (today we could call it free, but not in the Ayusistic sense of the term) which is accessed by going down some stairs and with a dozen wooden tables and stools. "But we are not competition", warns Tess Harmsen (Ibiza, 35 years old), who on August 15, 2015 inaugurated Cala Escondida, an already mythical space that attracts that type of clientele that does not need to be exactly rich to be attractive. "They are a shark, they have been around for many years and they have their audience. They even come to buses. We do not even have reservations, the price of beer (4.50 euros) I have not raised until recently because they increased the cost to me. We have a place at the bar to order food and drink to take away, so that people can have it on the beach or the rocks, because the tables fill up very quickly." The sunset that is observed from one place and another is the same. The experience, remarkably different.
The beach bar Cala Escondida.Jordi Adrià
But for a different experience with the sunset that lived during the month of April the neighbors of the Barcelona neighborhood of Carmel. For them, the sunset did not exactly bring peace and serenity. At the top of Turó de la Rovira, at 262 meters high, there are obviously disused anti-aircraft batteries dating from the Civil War. They are known as the Carmel bunkers, although they are not. What there is from that site are spectacular 360-degree views over the city of Barcelona and its metropolitan area. From here you can see the Sagrada Familia and Ciutat Meridiana, and going up to this point to watch the sunset became a tourist destination. On April 7, the Guardia Urbana evicted 1,300 people from the collapsed viewpoint. Shortly afterwards it was decided to close the access at 19.30. Today you can look, but you can't sunset. And the first thing is just what the thirty people who in the middle of the afternoon of a Tuesday at the end of May have gathered, perched on the anti-aircraft batteries drinking beer, eating pipes, sipping mate and listening to the music that comes out of the mobile of the youngest anti-aircraft battery partner. "We have not seen a hard with all that fever that there was," he reports from the door of the Delicias bar, on Mühlberg Street, one of the locations from which the last slope is faced until reaching the viewpoint, Martin, in charge of the premises. "You've already seen them, if they only carry bags from these supermarkets," he insists, pointing to one of those fruit and vegetable stores that would no longer exist if it weren't for the beers they ship.
View of Barcelona from the Carmel bunkers.Jordi Adrià
At the other end of the city, on the mountain of Montjuïc, there are municipal swimming pools, which hosted the jumping competition during the 1992 Olympic Games. The architect Antoni de Moragas had the brilliant idea of demolishing one of the stands, the one that turned its back on the city. With this, he created a viewpoint that led to some of the most iconic images of those Games, such as the famous photo of Txema Fernández of the Russian jumper Yelena Miroshina. Eleven years later, Kylie Minogue's video for her song Slow would make this space fashionable again. Now, this task falls to Marc Ros (Barcelona, 61 years old), who takes the concession of the bar of the enclosure, which he has baptized Salts (jumps). "The sunset from here is perfect," he says, pointing to the antenna of Sant Pere Màrtir, on which the sun will set in a while. People come, order their beer and sit in the stands to watch the sunset. The turnover rises by 35% in these hours.
There are tourists, but, above all, there are many people from the city, who finish work, go up to Montjuïc, which is increasingly popular and is more integrated into our day to day, have a drink and then go home to dinner, "says a few meters from there a girl who has come alone, He has ordered a beer and in a seat in the stands he is reading a book. This space is committed to everyday life, to integrate the sunset into the leisure routines of a city that on more than one occasion has been accused of only creating leisure routines for tourists (according to the INE, 9.7 million visitors and 29.8 overnight stays in 2022). "I understand that Instagram is important, and my partner is more interested in it than me, but I tell you that what Instagram does is create mass, it does not discriminate. The place fills up, but it loses personality. And this sunset has character," he says, pointing to the rays of sun bouncing off the water of the two pools.
Two customers of the Salts Bar witness the sunset on the stands of the Olympic swimming pool of Montjuïc, with the city of BarcelonaJordi Adrià
In 2010, Norway's secluded Trolltunga rock formation, accessed after a four-hour walk, welcomed 800 travelers. In 2016, after popularizing the images, especially of its sunset, on Instagram (the social network began operating in 2010), more than 80,000 people visited it. On Instagram, the sunset hashtag has more than 300 million entries. Images of sunsets around the world that confirm the drive to portray them that enters us every time we come across a new one (in location, by definition all are) or surprising. "In social networks, people want to share sensational moments," says Violeta Alcocer. "A sunset is evocative for everyone, it's an image that means many things, without the need to add more, and that makes it very appealing for network users." According to a survey of 79,000 people by travel website MissTravel in 2021, 48% of Instagram users decide the destination of their holidays based on what they see on the network. One in three confess that their use of Instagram is basically to discover new places. By age group, it is millennials who most trust this social network to decide where they will live their next experience: 78%, while those of generation X barely add up to 6%.
Madrid from the rooftop of the Four Seasons hotel.Jordi Adrià
The day does not accompany in Madrid's Temple of Debod, one of the most popular spots in the capital to see the sunset. From Madrid, the sky and the water. In its gardens people are mixed doing yoga, and others, lifting beer can. At the viewpoint, barely a dozen are photographed with the Casa de Campo, Somosaguas and, above all, huge gray clouds in the background. Nothing to do with the large agglomerations that occur in summer or in those unique winter days. Sitting in a parterre, a gang of lateros from Bangladesh rests in the absence of business. "Today we sold three," says one of them, showing the display with Mahou cans and empty water bottles with which he walks through the park. "On a normal day, 20... 20 euros". That is the approximate price of a cocktail at Dani Brasserie, on the terrace of the Four Seasons hotel, inaugurated in 2020 in Canalejas, Madrid, and which means one of the latest arrivals to the universe of rooftops, those premises placed on rooftops, almost always hotels, that fight for a clientele based on offering unique views and exclusive experiences. This afternoon at the Four Seasons, the sky looks a little clearer and the sunset, with the imperial buildings of Calle de Alcalá and Seville in the foreground, is a luxury.
"The key is cirrus clouds," warns meteorologist and Aemet disseminator Benito Fuentes. Eight pages trying to understand the fascination with sunsets and, in the end, it turns out that everything comes from thin clouds composed of ice crystals. If we are nobody. "As the sun approaches the horizon, its rays travel more atmospheric space. This causes the blue and violet colors to disperse, and we are left with the reddest. When the sun is up, those bluish tones prevail, that's why we see the blue sky. So, at sunset, the reflection of those rays on the cirrus clouds is what brings spectacularity." Fuentes affirms that the aesthetic quality of the sunset per season depends on the frequency of anticyclones, so it is likely that in autumn and spring we will find the most beautiful sunsets. As for beauty by location, he insists on the democracy of the sunset: everyone is beautiful, we are the ones who discriminate against them. "Look, I live in Teruel, and one day my mother came and told me that the sunset looked much nicer here. I had never noticed that. The reason may be that the clay color of the soil here causes a more beautiful contrast." The meteorologist assures that climate change has not yet affected the way in which sunsets are presented to us every afternoon, although he does guess that, if episodes of haze become more common and the presence of chemtrails in the sky increases, it is possible that what we see may vary. And what do we feel? Fuentes pauses. "I don't think, it will still be the best time of the day."