Christianity and traditional celebrations
Most Spaniards are Catholics, at least by tradition if not by confession, and as far as religion is concerned, the inhabitants of Ibiza behave in much the same way as the peninsulars. However, morals are changing and the pews of the churches are becoming emptier and emptier, especially during Sunday mass. In fact, a good quarter of Spaniards say they are atheists, and the occasions for going to church are limited to celebrations such as weddings, funerals and baptisms, which in many respects are more social than religious gatherings. However, Catholicism continues to play a determining role in the course of the year. In fact, in addition to the many religious holidays that punctuate the calendar, the Fiesta de los Reyes de Oriente (Feast of the Kings, at the beginning of January) or the Semana Santa (Easter week) are moments of authentic religious fervor. The towns and villages of the island - all named after saints, except for Eivissa and Jesus - also celebrate their patronal feasts with great pomp and circumstance every year. These are important moments when young and old meet in the public space and pay homage to the patron saint of their locality in a spirit of good-natured celebration.
For example, the Cavalcada de Reis (Three Wise Men's parade) is celebrated on January 5, bringing gifts to good children; thanks are given to St. Anthony on January 17 in Sant Antoni de Portmanyà and to St. Agnes on January 21 in the town of Santa Agnes de Corona; incredible processions are held during Semana Santa (Easter); the Verge del Carme, protector of the fishermen, is praised in all the ports of the Balearic Islands on July 16, and even at sea; the city of Eivissa is taken by hysteria on August 5 to celebrate Santa Maria de la Nieves, patron saint of the city, and then again three days later around the figure of San Ciriaco, patron saint of the island...
Other pre-Christian religions and cultures
In addition to these religious celebrations, there are older pagan festivals that were later incorporated into Catholicism, such as the Nit de Sant Joan on June 24, a major pagan festival celebrating the arrival of summer. The arrival of many foreign nationals has also led to the practice of other religions, such as Islam and Protestantism, which, although in the minority, also have their own followers and places of worship on the island.
Buddhism, brought by hippies who passed through Kathmandu in the 1960s, also has its place on Ibiza, in its Europeanized and somewhat watered-down version. Various spiritualities, more or less associated with Buddhism and the Zen movement, have naturally found fertile ground on this island of freedom. Finally, Ibiza is also home to a number of sects, such as Jehovah's Witnesses, Baha'is and the Mormon Church.
But before the arrival of Christianity, Ibiza and the Balearic Islands were inhabited by various civilizations with their own beliefs, which have left behind a few vestiges: necropolises with thousands of burials dating back to the Phoenician-Archaic period (7th century BC), such as Puig des Molins (Ibiza) or Punta dels Fenicis (Mallorca), from which archaeologists have been able to extract various objects linked to funerary rites.
With regard to these Punic amulets (from the Carthaginian civilization), carved bone pieces or necklaces of pearls and bronze bells with a clearly Egyptian typology, most of which were found in children's tombs, the most likely hypothesis is that they were fetishes intended to protect the youngest, and therefore the weakest, from disease. The figure of Tanit, goddess of Ibiza, also dates back to Punic times.
Some legends of Ibiza
Ibiza's history is full of accounts of strange cults, witch flights and UFO sightings. Everyone has his or her own version, and doesn't hesitate to add his or her own personal touch: it's not uncommon to find over twenty different versions of the same subject. Such is the case with the island's worship of the goddess Tanit. As Ibiza has been occupied by many different civilizations (Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans, Vandals and Arabs), Ibicenco folklore reflects a great mix of legacies from these various cultures, with a clear predominance of legends steeped in Christianity. Here are some of the most remarkable stories and legends from the White Island.
The goddess Tanit. The great lady of Carthage is also the goddess of Ibiza. Presumably imported by the Carthaginians during their pre-ancient occupation of the island, her cult was assimilated to that of Ba'al Hammon (the principal god of Carthage, itself associated with the cult of Cronos/Saturn). According to Diodorus Siculus, a Greek historian of the 1st century B.C., human sacrifice was part of the practice of paying homage to him. Although the fact has never been proven, funerary urns containing the bones of children mixed with those of animals, discovered on Ibiza, tend to support this thesis. In the time of Diodorus Siculus, the island was also reputed to have been the site of a kind of sacred prostitution under the figure of Tanit. Rumor or truth? In any case, long after the fall of Carthage, the goddess continued to be honored throughout the Mediterranean basin, from the Berbers of North Africa to the Romans, who associated her with their goddess Juno (queen of the gods and protector of marriage and fertility). A visit to Cala de Sant Vincent (Punta Grossa) will take you to the foot of theEs Culleram cave: in 1907, a Carthaginian temple dedicated to the goddess Tanit was discovered in the hollow of the cave.
The legend of the familiars. Legend has it that Santa Eulària is home to some particularly ugly little creatures, gifted with an astonishing capacity for work: the familiars. To capture one, you need to go under the Old Bridge of Santa Eulària, equipped with a black bottle into which you've poured a little holy water, and pick a glittering flower that only appears in this place on the night before Midsummer's Day, and place it in the container. Some time later, a familiar is born, which the owner can release at will, ensuring that he can satisfy the ferocious appetite of this little being who has become his servant, namely by providing him with colossal quantities of work or food. For, as soon as it's out of the bottle, the familiar bestially demands " Feina o menjar!" (" work or food! "), and only calms down once one of its two requests has been met. If the familiar 's master is unable to provide him with a quantity of food to match his appetite, or a mass of work to match his strength, the familiar devours the entire pantry. The only way to avoid such a calamity would be to ask the little creature to perform an impossible task... Along the Santa Eulària river there's a small path where you can come across a few familiars... in statues!
Es Vedrà and its legends. Ibiza's south-western region has always been rich in myths and legends: the goddess Tanit was worshipped here, the mermaids of the sunken city of Atlantis were sought here and, with the arrival of the new wave, UFOs in the depths of the sea. While science tends to refute all these hypotheses, the experience of a somewhat nonconformist monk from the Carmelite Order on the islet of Es Vedrà in 1864 is nothing short of historic. Francisco Palau (1811-1872), who had become an embarrassment to the Church because of his unconventional ideas, was sent to Ibiza in 1854 by the ecclesiastical authorities, where he set up a hermitage in a cave on the Es Cubells side. At the beginning of 1864, he decided to get back involved in the life of the town, with the aim of exorcising the island's godless peasants. Soon tired of preaching to the masses, and aided by a fisherman friend, he retired to a cave in Es Vedrà, devoting himself entirely to meditation. It was then that a series of intense nocturnal revelations came to him, which he later compiled in a collection combining the theme of ecstatic self-transformation with symbolism linked to gardening, an activity held in high esteem by the island's inhabitants. Francisco Palau became an important figure on the island, and his first hermitage at Es Cubells became an important place of pilgrimage. The monk was beatified in 1988.
The Buddha of Atlantis. A hundred meters above the natural pools of Atlantis, partially hidden behind juniper branches, lies one of Ibiza's hidden treasures: a huge circular painting of a Buddha printed directly onto the rock. Rumor has it that it was made by a Vietnam veteran of Japanese origin, judging by the date that accompanies the drawing, 1979, written in Japanese ideograms. In reality, it's a multi-armed Bodhisattva of compassion, which became a symbol of the island in the 1980s. In 2011, however, the work was vandalized with spray paint, which admirers of the Buddha then painstakingly reproduced. Even today, the site is a sanctuary for those seeking peace, and it's not uncommon to come across apprentices meditating in the lotus position. The fact remains, however, that mystery surrounds the originator of the Atlantis Buddha. All we know is that his name was Mabo and that he had something to do with the island of Kyushu.
