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Ibiza Parties On Regardless
18 July 2007
Club closures, an oil spill and a bomb hoax could never dampen the island’s party spirit, but that’s not what the UK press would have you believe...
As anyone who’s ever enjoyed the full-throttle clubbing on offer in Ibiza will know, the party stops for no one, night or day. But British newspapers, who have already tried to tell us that dance music is ‘dead’, now seem intent on proclaiming Ibiza as ‘finished’.
Both the Independent and Times newspapers published stories over the weekend declaring “Ibiza: The Party Is Over”, painting a gloomy picture of the island as rife with ‘drug gangs’, terrorists, shut down nightclubs and now oil pollution, yet still admitting that over 500,000 Brits flock there to “party until dawn” every summer.
Then the Daily Telegraph weighed in on Monday with a slightly different angle – sending a reporter to visit an Ibiza club ‘undercover’ to find, just as expected, some ‘drug crazed’ youths!
Well, let’s set a few facts straight. The 3 clubs that were closed, Amnesia, Bora Bora and DC10 are now all open again and wildly popular. There’s plenty of speculation about the different political and legal reasons for the episode, but the end result seems to have been to generate a lot of negative press for the island, scare off the more brazen drug dealers and spoil some people’s holidays in June.
It has certainly not had any effect on Ibiza’s unique atmosphere, the grand spectacle of its parties or the passion of the visitors, as clubbers in the vast queue for Carl Cox opening night at Space last night told us.
“The papers are talking ****e,” said Jane, 21, from Wales. “This is the most amazing place ever. We’ve had such a great time and we’re coming back in September for the Closing Parties too.”
A group of lads from Manchester were keen to back that up. “The only people who say bad things about Ibiza are people who have not been here to experience the parties. They are something else. We say, come here, stick your elbow in and you’ll want the whole bath!”
Thousands of people are having the time of their life on the island right now as they do every summer. Wild parties may not be to everybody’s taste, but it’s nonsense for journalists sitting in London to proclaim Ibiza’s glory days are behind it by loosely stringing a few different news items together.
Last week’s oil spill resulting from a sunken ship has now largely been contained. We inspected the closed beaches this week, which had all been protected by booms along the shoreline and the sand was in good condition. Further out at sea the water did contain a thin oily layer in places but a bigger environmental disaster seems to have been prevented by divers sealing off the leaking ship.
The bomb scare at the airport turned out to be a hoax, and only received as much international coverage as it did because of the failed London attacks the day before.
It seems unnecessarily harsh on the many 1000s of people who live and work in Ibiza for newspapers to pick up on these difficult challenges to tourism and combine them with misguided opinions about the club scene and drugs to conclude that ‘the party is over’ for the island.
There may be a new focus on tackling the more menacing aspects of drug dealing locally, which can only be welcomed, but Ibiza’s legendary tolerant attitude towards life in general is what sets it aside from the rest of the world and it would be hard to see that stopping on the strength of governmental policies, as it has persisted over many generations of different, often difficult rule.
“Drug taking is a problem everywhere,” holidaymaker Emma Jonstone, 25, told us at Monday night’s packed out Cocoon party at Amnesia. “but shutting down clubs is a really bad way to deal with it. People look forward to letting themselves go when they come here, and only very few really push it too far, but that’s not the clubs fault anyway, it’s their own. The Ibiza vibe won’t be spoiled, just look around, it’s such a positive thing for so many people.”
Whatever happens, it’s the people who make any party, and with international crowds packing out the huge clubs every single night of the week right now in Ibiza, take it from us - the party is most certainly not over.
(ministryofsound.com)
