There are places that tell their own story. Ibiza is one of them — and yet nobody really tells it well. Ibiza has a reputation. That reputation is deserved, incomplete, and ultimately not very useful if you are trying to understand why people return every year for twenty years.
What one rents in Ibiza is a quality of light. A Mediterranean light that belongs only to this island — more golden than that of the Spanish coast, more intense than that of the Greek islands, with a way of falling on the white walls of the fincas in the late afternoon that has driven painters mad for a century.
It is useful to think of Ibiza as two distinct destinations superimposed on the same map. The south and west — Ses Salines, Cala Bassa, Cala Comte, San Antonio, Ibiza Town itself — is the island the world knows. Vibrant, festive, international, with beach clubs that raise the question of whether one is still on a beach at all.
The north — Sant Joan de Labritja, Santa Agnès, San Mateu, the roads that descend toward Portinatx — is another island entirely. Fields of lavender and almond trees. Village markets on Saturday mornings. Calas accessible only by dirt tracks. Fincas whose walls are two hundred years old and whose terraces look out over a sea that nobody films.
June is the perfect month. The sea is beginning to warm. The tourists are there but not yet all of them. Restaurants still have space. The evening light lasts until nine. September may be even better — the island's best-kept secret. The temperatures are the same as in August. The sea is warmer. Villa prices drop thirty to forty percent. And the island recovers something of what it was before it became what it is.
The best properties in Ibiza are those that allow you to inhabit both versions of the island — wild enough in the morning, close enough to the city for the evening.
The best Ibiza villas are converted fincas with taste — thick stone walls, terraces in the shade of carob trees, pools that seem to pour into the sea. They are properties with a history that do not look like catalogue villas. There are also contemporary properties on the heights of Es Cubells or above Cala Tarida, with infinity pools and views that need no description.
