Introducing the third print edition of L'OFFICIEL IBIZA.
As the island evolves and adapts once more, L’OFFICIEL IBIZA’s Editor at Large MAYA BOYD revisits the visionary stories of COMMUNITY, COLLABORATION and CREATIVITY that have long seen Ibiza cast as a symbol of Balearic UTOPIA.
October 1971. A sun-baked, shade-streaked, late season afternoon, the kind when the sharp light of summer has softened to a diffuse glow. The as-yet-undeveloped shores of Cala San Miguel are a beehive of buzzing activity. Artists and architects, hippies and payeses. Slowly, surely, a rainbow mirage materializes, a fleeting utopia woven from inflatable dreams. An icon of avant-garde Catalan design, an extraordinarily ambitious socio-cultural experiment and the embodiment of the island’s countercultural ideals, this was Ibiza’s ‘Instant City’.
In the early 1970s, Ibiza was a rural, in parts isolated and relatively underdeveloped backwater, famed in intellectual and design circles for its remarkable vernacular architecture and the piercing quality of its light. Due to its outlying location, the island also remained largely outside the climate of repression and censorship of Franco's Spain. It was for these reasons, among others, that Ibiza was selected in 1971 as the location for a three-day conference of the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (ICSID). The conference had traditionally taken place within congress spaces such as the London Design Centre but this, according to Catalan designer André Ricard Sala, had stagnated the conversation. He noted that: ‘it is in the huddles that take place in the cafes, in the hallways and on the buses, that people truly communicate. There we can chat with each other, share ideas and mix interests.’ It was to ferment this spirit of community and collaboration that Ricard, along with Industrial Design Association member Daniel Giralt-Miracle, proposed the island of Ibiza for the next conference. Their idea was accepted.
Vastly oversubscribed by the autumn of 1971, the organisers rapidly realised they had overlooked the issue of accommodation for the many thousands of international attendees. When two students, the now-esteemed Catalan architect Carlos Ferrater and his compadre Fernando Bendito, posited the idea of inflatable housing as a creative solution to the accommodation crisis, their professor – the late, great, visionary architect José Miguel de Prada Poole – approved. An inflatable city was imagined, a pop-up pueblo built not with the cold weight of tradition, but with the lightness of possibility. Here was not a metropolis built to endure, but a pulsating organism, a threeday experiment in communal living and artistic expression. Not a city at all, it was in fact a series of interconnected, inflatable pods; translucent Crayola-coloured bubbles on the beach that served as communal spaces for living, loving, learning and experimenting. Walls were permeable, fostering a spirit of transparency and connection. Communal areas pulsated with the energy of shared ideals. The iconic tree pavilion, its branches reaching for the sun, wasn't just a whimsical structure, but a symbol - a reminder that this fleeting utopia thrived in harmony with nature, not dominance.
The Instant City architects - dedicated young visionaries imbued with all reckless rebellion of the young - threw out the blueprints of traditional urban planning. They created the framework, a canvas of 15,000 square metres of shimmering PVC (remnants of which would be found in various agricultural settings across the island for decades), but the true artistry unfolded in the act of collective creation. A global community – students, designers, thought leaders and maverick minds – converged on Cala San Miguel, not with physical hardware, but with the tools of imagination and collaboration. Armed with paper plans, staple guns and Ferrater’s ambitiously titled ‘camping manifesto’, they set to work sculpting a living city whose very construction methods fostered a sense of shared purpose and an erasure of hierarchy.
It was in fact the ephemerality of the Instant City that underscored its utopian ideals. Designed to be in use for a mere three days, it challenged the very notion of permanence often associated with power structures. This wasn't about leaving a lasting mark, but about crafting a fleeting experience, a snapshot of a world free from the constraints of the established order. In its impermanence, it offered a radical proposition: utopia wasn't a distant destination, but a state of being that could be created, experienced, and dismantled, all within a single, transformative breath. As the final sun dipped below the horizon on the third day, the Instant City began to deflate. The vibrant colours faded; the once-proud structures sank back to the earth. But within the hearts and minds of those who witnessed its fleeting glory, the utopian embers remained. Far more than a physical structure, this had been a beacon of light and a reminder that the most potent utopias aren't built with steel and concrete, but with the audacity to dream and the courage to create, even if only for the space of a single, unforgettable breath. Ibiza’s Instant City may have been ephemeral, but its legacy lives on, testament to the enduring power of the human quest for a better world.
It was precisely this quest for a better world that resonated with the Spanish photographer Oriol Maspons (1928-2013). Born just a few years before the Spanish Civil War, Maspons' formative years were marked by a sense of societal restriction and a culture of oppression and scarcity. Yet, within this context, he found solace in the transformative power of photography. Maspons wasn't interested in capturing static moments, but in breathing life into the burgeoning counterculture movement that swept through Spain in the 1950s and ‘60s. As a young man, he became a chronicler of a generation yearning for a more vibrant, liberated reality. His lens captured the energy of artistic gatherings, the defiant spirit of student protests and the bohemian charm of Barcelona's cafés – all spaces where the utopian ideals of the Instant City had found fertile ground.
But Maspons' vision wasn't solely focused on documenting societal change. He was arguably more drawn to the individuals themselves who embodied these ideals. His portraits, particularly those of fellow artists and cultural figures like Salvador Dalí and singers of the Nova Cançó movement, showcased a deep empathy and a keen eye for capturing the essence of the creative spirit. When he discovered Ibiza in the mid-1950s, so ensued a love affair that would continue until the late 1980s. His lens became a portal into the island’s counterculture community, a window into the worlds of the likes of Armin Heinemann and Stuart Rudnick, founders of the iconic Paula’s Ibiza boutique, and Juanita and Lou, hippies who embodied the nonconformist spirit of the era. While omnipresent at Ibiza’s nightclubs, Maspons was not a seeker of opulence; instead, he was a poet of sun-kissed skin and stolen moments; a chronicler of both the ridiculous and the sublime.
His camera captured the intangible allure of an island whose mystique still speaks for itself. In a new book of his photography, Oriol Maspons Ibiza, released by London-based publisher IDEA, we see a reflection of this utopian yearning – a yearning for self-expression, for connection, and for a world where art transcends the boundaries of the conventional. We see sun-bleached villages and cuboid fincas, their whitewashed walls glowing like forgotten dreams. We see slender figures silhouetted against crimson sunsets, their laughter and their youth echoing across the canvas. We feel the cool spray of well-timed cliff dive, the dark exhilaration of a midnight swim and the salt tang of nut-brown skin laid bare on the beach. His lens sought beauty in the unconventional, in the unfettered, in the unselfconscious celebration of uninhibited joy. Yet, Maspons was not naïve. He understood the complexities of the world he documented. His photographs also captured the stark realities of Francoist Spain – the poverty, the censorship, the stifling conformity. This duality, this weaving together of utopian ideals with the harsh realities of the present, is what gives his work such depth and power.
It could be said that Maspons' photography served as a bridge between the fleeting utopia of the Instant City and the ongoing struggle for a better world. While not perhaps as reactionary as it once was, Ibiza’s unique way of living is still influenced by the societal values of its local and international residents. Largely decentralised - in part thanks to the native population’s historic self-sufficiency – modern life still revolves around shared values as opposed to established structures. In times of global upheaval, when our very existence is an act of rebellion and the world asks: who are you to dare to dream? Ibiza’s response, as ever, is: who are we not to? As it did for Oriol Maspons and for the Instant City generation, the spirit of Ibiza remains a testament to the power of human connection, to the refuge of artistic expression and to a yearning for love and liberation. To an unshakeable belief in the idea that even the most fantastical dreams can take shape, if only for a fleeting moment.
Oriol Maspons Ibiza / Edited by Agony + Ecstasy Gallery and published by IDEA Books (2024).
