Back To The Land

Ibiza is throwing off its party-till-dawn image. Now, even the ravers grow their own vegetables as part of the love-in with the island's field-to-fork movement

- Paul Richardson

For 10 years, during the 1990s, I lived in a whitewashed farmhouse with no electricity in the northern reaches of Ibiza—as far as you could go on the island from the party crowd— and my lifestyle was the opposite of raving. I kept goats and pigs and hens. The only repetitive beats I heard were the tap-tap-tap of the wooden poles used by my rustic neighbors to harvest almonds in September. At around the same time that people were stumbling out of Manumission, I was driving into the sleepy hamlet of San Juan to pick up my faxes.

For years afterward, I stayed away, afraid of how busy and built-up the island might have become in my absence. Then, recently, I crept back to Ibiza for a few days, and what I found quite surprised me. Of course, there were crazy prices and gridlocked traffic on the new motorways, but I was excited to discover that beyond the madness, the White Island’s rural spirit was not merely surviving but also showing signs of a new dynamism.