galore,” attracting a youthful, carefree tourist clientele constituted predominantly by
the British working class (40 percent of tourists), and German and Spanish middle
classes (25 percent and 15 percent, respectively). As a result, after centuries of
poverty and isolation, La Isla Blanca often tops Spanish, Mediterranean, and even
European rankings for per-capita income, economic growth, and tourism—as well as
those for divorce, AIDS, and drug consumption. These socio-economic indices
demonstrate an intense and fast-changing society, and validate the claim that “Ibiza
is paradigmatic to those who interrogate the development of contemporary
societies” (Rozenberg 1990:3).
Yet Ibiza projects us outward, into a complex logic interrelating global and
countercultural processes. The island’s foreign population is unique. While there are
officially 11,000 immigrants, the real figure may double when frequent, albeit
mobile, “visitors” are included. In this community of increasingly hyphenated and
blurred citizenships, national origins (German, British, French, Dutch, Italian, Latin
and North American) are fading references. In addition to Spanish cosmopolitans, a
large number of this population are born of bohemian parents of differing
nationalities, hold dual citizenships, and speak multiple languages. Having lived in
three or more countries, India holds a special signification in the lives of many
Many are drawn from middle and upper social strata locally and abroad, often
members of artistic, cultural, and economic elites (Institut Balear d’Estadística
1996; Rozenberg 1990).
Most have chosen the island as an ideal place for shaping an aesthetic “style of life”,
rather than the usual economic-centered motivations of most Spanish and African
immigrants. Embodying reflections of later Foucault (Foucault and Lotringer 1989),
their “aesthetics of existence” is manifested in various spiritual, creative, and
hedonistic practices, cultivating values of freedom, pleasure, tolerance, and self-
exploration. Often, these cosmopolitan subjects have sought to break away from the
stress, boredom, and meaninglessness they experience in “mainstream” society.
However, despite fleeing “the mainstream,” Ibiza’s transnational imaginary has
paradoxically placed these self-marginalized people at the very center of its creative
life, a cultural elite crafting much of the seductive charm of the island.
This charisma is disseminated globally, as these cosmopolitan subjects are also
global nomads who sustain alternative lifestyles by tracing nodes of freakness along
transnational circuits. Typical alternative careers include luxury traders, therapists,
healers, yoga teachers, fashion professionals, musicians, DJs, party promoters, drug
dealers, travel agents, pack-and-go workers, rich bohemians, etc. Art and spirituality
loom large on this alternative map of “utopian” sites that includes Ibiza (Spain),
Goa (India), Bali (Indonesia), Bahia (Brazil), Ko Pagnan (Thailand), Byron Bay
(Australia), San Francisco (U.S.A.), in addition to other varying locations. At
another level, such utopian sites are interconnected and sustained by big urban
centers (usually global cities) such as London, Frankfurt, Milan, Tel Aviv,
Barcelona, Buenos Aires, Mumbai, and Bangkok.
Such geo-cultural formations can be represented as a freak ethnoscape,^4
understood as a global web of mobile subjects, practices, objects, and
ANTHONY D’ANDREA 237