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 Ibiza’s first hedonists, the hippies, were seduced by the island’s natural beauty and tranquility. Away from the club scene, you can still tap into their vibe, Sarah Monaghan discovers, but it is best to go out of season.
The breeze smelled deliciously of pine and thyme as we cycled over rough tracks between farms around the village of San Mateu in the hills of western Ibiza. Autumn is almond harvesting time and men were shaking the nuts from the trees and raking them into rows.
Ibizan earth is red and iron-rich, ideal for the cultivation of the olive, carob and fig trees that for centuries have thrived here on the island’s Mediterranean maritime climate. In many places the land remains fertile thanks to acequias – stone irrigation channels that tap into the underground watertables. They were built by the Moors who occupied the island from the 7th century until they were ousted by the Catalans in 1229. The green hills are dotted with white, the traditional colour of the country houses built with thick walls in a series of cubes.
As I pedalled past dry-stone-walled fields, gazed across pine-topped hills and breathed in the fresh air, it was hard to believe that a few kilometres away in San Antonio, pints were being swilled, all-day breakfasts served and clubbers pumping up for pill-popping pleasures on the island’s legendary dancefloors. The largest super-club, Privilege, has capacity for 10,000 partygoers. Then there is Space, with 22-hour Sunday parties, or the exclusive Pacha in Ibiza Town, where the entrance is 50 euros.
Hard to believe, too, that this kind of commercialism has emerged in the wake of the island’s first hedonists: the pelluts (hairy people) or the hippy generation, who came seduced by Ibiza’s natural beauty to dance on open-air terraces overlooking the sea. Fifty miles off the Spanish mainland, the island has been a fashionable destination ever since they discovered its spiritual magic in the 1960s. Their mecca, Es Vedra, a tiny islet in the southwest, is said to be the world’s third most magnetic point, after the North Pole and the Bermuda Triangle.
They came, too, because of the islanders’ legendary reputation for tolerance. Even in Franco’s dictatorial times, Ibiza had Spain’s first nudist beach on the wild sand dunes in the south at Es Cavallet.
When it comes to wildness, in recent years the island has not had altogether good press (British lagerlouts in San Antonio’s notorious ‘West End’ often to blame. Today, the island, while remaining tolerant of the cashcow that is the club scene, wants to attract a different kind of visitor. The type who can appreciate what the islanders themselves love about the place: the peace and beauty that inspired the Café del Mar sunset music Ibiza is famous for and what Neus Tur of the Ibiza Tourist Board describes as the island’s “quiet magic”. Read the full article in our December 2008 edition. |
