THE NEW YORK TIMES: On luxurious Ibiza, essential workers are forced to live in tent cities

At 1900 euros a month, the rent was not cheap. But Alicia Bocuñano still felt fortunate to find an apartment in Ibiza at that price.

As a taxi driver pulling 16-hour days, Bocuñano, a single mother who grew up on this Spanish island, figured that a surplus from the busy summer months might be enough to make the rent.

But her would-be landlord wanted six months of rent plus a security deposit upfront — close to 14,000 euros (about $23,112) in one shot. Though not quite legal in Spain’s tightly regulated rental sector, such demands are common on Ibiza, where wealthy tourists fill beachfront hotels and glittering dance clubs while the people who work in those places — not to mention the island’s teachers, firefighters and other essential workers — can’t find a place to live.

In lieu of a new apartment, Bocuñano, 38, spent a frightening two weeks sleeping in her car, then three months in a tent with her 10-year-old son, Raúl, by her side, before buying a used caravan in June. For a couple of months, she stationed the Caravelair-brand trailer in Can Rova, an ad hoc village of tents, shacks and campers on the outskirts of Ibiza Town, the island’s capital, just behind a dealership selling expensive powerboats.

“When we first came here it was cold,” she said. “Like, very cold.”

Tent cities began popping up here in 2023, but they have mushroomed in size and number this year. Can Rova, the largest of three major camps in and around the capital, was home to some 280 people this summer. On a recent July night, six people and a dog were bedding down on the floor in Bocuñano’s caravan.

Many Can Rova residents said that, with nowhere else to go, they hoped to stay indefinitely. But on July 31, police made good on a court order to clear the camp, which had been erected on private land. (The owner is embroiled in an array of zoning and legal disputes.)

Many said they planned to relocate to one of the other camps, even as those sites lacked the electricity, water and perimeter fence that made Can Rova accommodating.

Bocuñano was detained by police during the mass eviction and may face a fine.

In much of the world, homelessness correlates with a lack of work. But not on Ibiza, where the jobs are plentiful and the booming tourism sector depends on itinerant workers (with varying immigration status). Though seasonal labour has long strained the housing supply for a few months each year, the shortage now looks more structural.

“People who work every day to care for their children have no place to live,” Bocuñano said.

The rise of remote work and a surge in short-term rentals have erased many apartments from the market, compounding existing shortages caused by land-use restrictions on an island prized for its natural beauty, and by poor public policy that followed the burst of Spain’s housing bubble in 2008.

“It is fundamental,” said Carme Trilla, an economist and former director of housing policy for Catalonia, the Spanish region on “the peninsula”, as islanders are wont to say.

“By definition they have to live there, and it’s not only price but also availability that is a problem.”

Ibiza’s deepening housing crisis came slowly at first, and then all at once. The island’s brand — “sun, beaches, nightlife,” as one broker put it — blossomed in the 1960s and ’70s as bohemians congregated on this Balearic Island. The flower children gave way to disco, and bell bottoms were pushed off the dance floor in the 1980s and 1990s by rave culture. By the 2000s, Ibiza had secured its reputation as a mecca for electronic music and luxury escapism.

“It is the only place in the world where you can see the top DJs in the world in top venues every night,” said Yann Pissenem, CEO and owner of the Night League, parent company to Ushuaia and Hi, two of the island’s hottest clubs.

The island’s year-round population of 160,000 is double what it was 20 years ago and growing. During peak summer months, more than 1 million people make merry on the island at any given time, with upscale tourism putting still more pressure on housing.

Ibiza is an extreme example of a larger phenomenon in Spain, where about 12 per cent of the gross domestic product comes from tourism.

A recent report found that in 306 cities and towns considered tourism draws, rents are an average of 75 per cent higher than the national average — the largest gap ever.

Already this summer, thousands of protesters have turned up in other vacation spots including Malaga, Mallorca and the Canary Islands to demonstrate against the excesses of tourism.

Trilla, who now runs Habitat 3, a foundation that works to facilitate subsidised housing, said that on Ibiza, the crisis has been intensified by a new spate of discount airline connections to European capitals, and by more online platforms renting apartments to foreign visitors.

The median price for a home on the island is now 558 euros a square foot — three times the national average and more than double the average in Madrid and Barcelona.

Three-quarters of prospective buyers on Ibiza are looking for a second home, while another 15 per cent want an investment property, said Paloma Pérez Bravo, CEO of Sotheby’s International Realty in Spain.

So on an island with inadequate housing and limited buildable land, many homes sit vacant for much of the year. And since the pandemic, she added, there’s been more demand from buyers who want to live on the island year-round.

“Ibiza is a good investment because the prices never stop rising,” Pérez said.

On a recent afternoon just before the demolition at Can Rova, residents related stories of crammed studio apartments where people would sleep in shifts on so-called “hot beds” for about 300 euros a month.

Maria Fernanda Chica, a 34-year-old Colombian who is awaiting working papers, lived in one such apartment while cleaning luxury homes for cash.

“I couldn’t cook food when I needed to,” she said of the conditions. “At best I could use the kitchen once per day.”

This summer, she was living in a makeshift structure in Can Rova with her partner and teenage son. Most of the residents there rented plots for between 350 and 450 euros a month, plus 50 euros for water and another 50 euros for electricity. The residents were responsible for digging their own septic systems. A good number had built shanties from plywood, shipping pallets, AstroTurf, tarpaulins and other basic materials.

Jonathan Sanchez, 33, and his girlfriend Sandra Velasquez, 41, sleep in a tent among a few dozen others in another informal settlement. Sanchez, who was born on Ibiza, works construction by day. Velasquez, a Colombian emigre lacking work documents, works nights cleaning for 7 euros an hour.

“I don’t even remember the last time I went to the beach,” said Sanchez on a recent night. His T-shirt said “Ants” — the name of the party that Pissenem hosts on Saturdays.

The couple charge their mobile phones at bus stops and draw water from a tap in a nearby cemetery. Most of their neighbours are seasonal workers from Morocco who decamp after the summer season. Sanchez has been in his tent for 14 months. His co-workers have no idea where he lives.

“It’s not that I am embarrassed,” he said. “I just don’t want people to feel sorry for me.”

Whenever campers like Sanchez are forced to move on, the Guardia Civil, one of Spain’s two national police forces, will likely play a role (as they did in the Can Rova eviction). But many of the officers are themselves caught in this housing crisis.

At the height of tourist season, there were 17 vacant Guardia Civil positions on Ibiza. Many new recruits avoid work on the island and rotate out when they can find an opening elsewhere in Spain, said Tomas Quesada, a Guardia Civil officer and union representative. Starting salaries are just 1800 euros a month, and the monthly 94.63-euro cost-of-living bonus makes little difference.

“It is leading to the desertification of public services,” Quesada said.

“We have the right to be able to live.”

Nurses and doctors face a similar reality. So do teachers, some of whom commute daily by aeroplane from other islands to save money.

“We don’t have the same level of public services here in Ibiza,” said Joana Tur Planells, a union representative for teachers.

Land will always be limited on a 220-square-mile island, but there is an emerging consensus that government intervention is needed.

In the town of Santa Eulària des Riu, where Can Rova was located, City Hall plans to allocate 54,000 square feet of public land for housing construction over the next few years. Policy documents call for increased emphasis on the construction of multifamily dwellings and a crackdown on illegal short-term rentals.

Carmen Ferrer Torres, Santa Eulalia des Riu’s conservative mayor, points to plans to break ground on the construction of 60 smaller rental apartments — a fraction of the units needed to ease the strain.

“These are important, urgent problems with solutions that will take longer than we have,” the mayor said.

In the meantime, her party also advocates further liberalising rental markets, betting that streamlined evictions for scofflaws could free up stagnant housing stock. Ferrer was on site supporting the July 31 clearance of Can Rova.

But for Trilla, the housing economist, the big-picture solution is clear.

“It’s necessary to prioritise public housing for essential workers,” she said, adding that the problem is not just housing but the price of land. Basically, public money is needed to buy private property at market prices.

She pointed to a series of policies in Barcelona, the Catalonian capital, that might ease short-term housing supply, including one that would temporarily loosen zoning rules so officials could break up single-family homes into multiple apartments. Barcelona is also phasing out short-term rentals of the type offered by platforms like Airbnb. They will be virtually banned by 2028.

On the private side, successful business owners like Pissenem, the club impresario, are wrestling with the crisis. His company has begun helping its seasonal workers find accommodations.

“We all need to figure out a way to help the people that hold the island in their hands,” he said.

For now, Ibizans like Bocuñano wonder where their next home may be.

For the first couple of nights after the Can Rova raid, she stayed on a friend’s couch. Her son is staying with her mother on the other side of the island. She was briefly allowed back into Can Rova to get her personal possessions, including her caravan, but needed to borrow a vehicle to tow it.

From there, she said, “I am going to recover and put the pieces back together.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

© 2024 The New York Times Company