“There are houses everywhere!” My friend’s face is glued to the car window, as we drive along the main road on the northern side of the island. I turn right. A secondary road strings the plots on the east-facing valley together. The ploughed parcels expose the bright sienna colour of the swirled soil. Perfect rows of leafless almond trees fill the land. It is early January, and some brave flowers are blooming on the empty branches, refreshing the dusty palette.
“Bon dia!” She waves enthusiastically at an old man in electric blue overalls pruning the roadside vines. Their long, entangled branches are outgrowing the boundaries of the land, ferociously poking the tarmac as if to say: “Don’t you dare come any closer.”
Beyond them, the countryside in Ibiza is sprinkled with houses almost everywhere, sitting on small plots of land. Only one-third of the island’s total residents—151,827 in 2020—live in Ibiza town today. Yet whilst the phenomenon of tourism emphasised this landscape, it did not cause it. Before tourism kicked off in the 1960s, Ibicencos already lived scattered in the countryside.
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nuria 