History of clubbing in Ibiza: from Flower Power to mega clubs
A refuge. The emergence of Ibiza's monumental parties, drumming to the sound of overblown electronic rhythms, can certainly be explained, at least in part, by the arrival of hippies on the Pityuse Islands throughout the 1960s. Although since the 1930s, intellectuals, artists, outsiders and other exiles fleeing the rigors of Francoism had already found Ibiza a haven of simple customs and unspoiled landscapes, it was not until the beatnik wave - mutineers of consumer society and bourgeois conformism - that the boundless hedonism emblematic of the Pityuse Islands really blossomed. Going back to antiquity, there are indications that Ibiza was already a province of pleasure. At the beginning of Homer'sOdyssey, for example, we find the episode of the island of Calypso (which tradition places between Tangier and Ibiza), an island that Ulysses struggles to leave, numbed by the "sweet and amorous words" of a nymph. Also, a Phoenician legend has it that Ishtar, goddess of love, after having experienced a disappointed passion on the most magical island of the Balearic Islands, cursed him eternally out of anger, striking the island's lovers with a state of perpetual ecstasy.. So it was only natural that in the 1960s-1970s, souls in love with uninhibited pleasure saw Ibiza as a promised land that would enable them to live in communion with nature, and to build a cosmopolitan society free of cumbersome traditions.
The emergence of clubs. Peace & Love and Flower Power - the non-violent slogan coined at the Summer of Love rally in San Francisco (1967), when hippies wore flowers in their hair - were emulated. Soon, parties were being organized in fincas (traditional Balearic farmhouses) made available to owners who had embraced the movement. Such was the case with Pacha, today Ibiza's most emblematic club, which opened the doors of its typical casa de campo in 1973 (after the 1967 opening of the establishment in Sitges, south of Barcelona), advocating the free expression of the hippie movement and hedonists of all kinds. In 1975, Sant Antoni saw the blossoming of a spectacular club: Es Paradis. Originally an open-air venue, the dancefloor at Le Paradis seriously shook up what was then an indolent fishing village, so much so that it was later topped with its iconic pyramidal roof. In May 1976, a Madrilenian bought an 18th-century finca to set up a discotheque, which he named The Workshop of Forgetfulness, seeking to offer the public an escape from everyday life. He later appropriately renamed it Amnesia. In 1978, the Pikes Hotel was also built within the walls of a 15th-century finca by British socialite Anthony Pike, an Ibiza celebrity who passed away in 2019, and who succeeded in turning his establishment into a veritable institution, a glamorous playground for the rich and famous on the island, where Freddy Mercury celebrated his 41st birthday. Indeed, from the 1980s onwards, Ibiza became a magnet for what came to be known as the " beautiful people ": attracted by the island's climate and fashionable atmosphere, international personalities from the worlds of the arts (actors, singers), business (major industrialists and financiers), politics, sport and the media made a habit of spending a few days off in Ibiza. A phenomenon that continues to this day. Finally, we should mention the birth of Privilege, listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the largest discotheque in the galaxy and the universe! A simple restaurant in the 1970s, the place was bought by a footballer in 1979, who soon transformed it into a club: the KU, a veritable institution known in the 1980s as a place of sexual debauchery, with a predominantly gay audience, but also of musicalentertainment: Freddie Mercury, Gloria Gaynor, Grace Jones and James Brown performed there. At the time, the venue was compared to an open-air version of New York's famous Studio 54.
English DJs and the birth of Balearic Beat. Such was its success that nightclubs soon began to flourish on the island, and with them, in the 1980s and 90s, the great experiments of the techno and electronic beat movements. It was at this time that three British DJs discovered a new style in Ibiza: Balearic Beat. It turns out that Ibiza had a greater influence on the British club and music scene than vice versa, leading to the birth of the Acid House wave in 1988. While in the 1980s, Chicago's Warehouse and New York's Paradise Garage revolutionized the music scene, in Ibiza it was at Amnesia that the magic happened. In 1987, a group of young London DJs and producers - Paul Oakenfold, Danny Rampling, Johnny Walker and Nicky Holloway - were visiting the island, and decided to venture into the much-talked-about club, open from 3am to midday. That night, at L'Amnesia, they discovered the music of Alfredo Fiorito, an Argentinian DJ (DJ Alfredo) who had fled the dictatorship and boldly mixed George Michael hits with house sounds, as well as a new, euphoric drug seemingly designed for electronic dancefloors: ecstasy.
The liberated atmosphere - fancy clothes, alcohol and drug consumption beyond measure, unbridled sexuality - seduced the Brits, who, on their return to London, introduced Chicago House and Balearic sounds into their tracklist , which usually only played soulful Atlanta hits. The sauce didn't catch on right away: house music was too new for the public, and was reserved for a few gay clubs in the capital. Convinced of the future success of these emerging sounds, they organized their first Shoom parties, offering a mix of European electronic music and American house, which they called Balearic Beat. Despite their early beginnings, they eventually attracted a growing number of neophyte music lovers who danced into the wee hours of the morning. Throughout the 1990s, house music continued to top the British charts. In addition to London clubs (Shoom, Spectrum and The Trip), those in Sheffield and Manchester (Hacienda) were born, facilitating in their wake the development of raves, which were quickly declared illegal, notably because of the drugs they carried.
The hidden face of hedonism with Ibiza sauce
The industrialization of pleasure. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Ibiza's party scene was in full swing, fuelled by the gradual rise of tourism. Other mega-clubs sprang up, such asEden,Ushuïa and Space (now transformed into Hï Ibiza), which resident DJ Carl Cox made famous with his Music is Revolution nights, programmed 15 years in a row. Today, the White Island's electro scene is worth a trip for clubbers from all over the world. Nightclubs promoting the world's best DJs, trendy bars and beach huts selling out their days to the sound of subwoofers have become machines for producing entertainment and pleasure on an almost industrial level. Party promoters have a well-honed communication system to seduce the clientele: sexy shows in public spaces, model parades and parsimonious distribution of free or reduced admission. Low-cost trips are even organized from European capitals, with fares that include low-cost flights, cheap hotels, club admissions and mediocre, quickly swallowed food.
On this subject, French philosopher and sociologist Yves Michaud's investigation Ibiza mon amour: Enquête sur l'industrialisation du plaisir (2012) deserves a mention. In it, he describes Ibiza as a veritable laboratory for the analysis of what, in his view, is one of the main cogs in the wheel of our liberal societies, namely pleasure-seeking hedonism. And indeed, from the hippie wave of the 1960s to the monumental techno parties of the 2000s, Ibiza, a veritable party capital, has seen and continues to see individuals from all social classes pass through its doors - from the most prominent international stars to the most ordinary families - but all sharing the same desire for a vacation. In the style of a journalist, combining solid academic references with in-depth fieldwork, Michaud offers a subtle and slightly mischievous reading of the pleasure-creating machine that is, among other things, Ibiza.
From More to Amnesia. Ibiza puts the bodies of its clubbers to a severe test: sleepless nights, endless party-going, frenzied, topsy-turvy, sometimes to the point of ethylic coma. A few films released in the late 1960s had already explored the subject, notably Hallucination Generation (1966), by the prolific American filmmaker Edward Mann, subtitled "the psychedelic circus of beatniks, deranged people and acid addicts". If this film went unnoticed, More (1969), a feature film made in Ibiza by Barbet Schroeder, was a big hit. Set to the soundtrack of Pink Floyd, it depicts the adventures of a young German who discovers the pleasures, but also the hell, of drugs, at the instigation of an American woman with whom he falls in love. We discover the island of Ibiza, still untouched by urbanization, and the end of the Sixties myth, sliding from Flower Power to the heroin trap.
In 2015, Shroeder is back at it again with Amnesia, setting his plot in the 1990s. He brings together two characters: Martha, a German woman living in Ibiza for a long time, in denial about her own culture, and Max, a young techno DJ, also German. Although the film's central theme is the bond between the two characters and the renewed vision each has of their own country, it also provides an insight into the changes that time has wrought on the white island. And where there are drugs, there is organized crime. Over the past few years, the archipelago has been spared the effects of organized crime, but individuals linked to the Neapolitan mafia are now frequently arrested. The party, a real financial manna, continues despite everything, with an aftertaste of artificial paradise.
