IBIZA, ISLAND of CONTRASTS
Twenty
years ago I had a poster of Ibiza
hanging in my room, on a floor that I
shared with other students. I studied 2º of Tourism and I had never been
to Ibiza.
In the poster appeared
a woman, seen on her back, wearing a long black garment of a peasant,
and furthermore a whitewashed wall with three black crosses on it.
Down on the bottom, in big letters,
IBIZA.
I liked that particular
poster, although I did not understand its association with
Ibiza.
Peasants clothes from the time of my grandmother, three black crossings
on a whitewashed wall.........
What did it mean and what did it have to do with
Ibiza, or at least with the
image that I had.
I had never been there although I did hear much of
her, Ibiza island.
Who did not hear of Ibiza,
famous place throughout the world where the most varied VIPs and
celebrities meet.
At that time I studied
Tourism far away from there, not knowing what she would dedicate me to,
and without being able to imagine that
Ibiza would become the place where I would create my own physical
and psychic home.
I did not imagine at that time, that in the future she would dedicate to
me to explain to others what was incomprehensible for
me.
After years, almost
without trying I saturated it in Ibiza.
And almost without wanting I became an
official guide.
And the image of that one poster acquired sense to me:
simplicity, roots into the Earth,
respect and harmony of men with its surroundings, functionality…
A philosophy of life,
maintained during centuries by peasants, and that was very well
understood by the first hippies that arrived here.
A form of life that began to conclude when mass tourism made its
entrance to the island by the Seventies, and rural territory that still
resists to succumb to the impersonal modern constructions that extend by
so many, many tourist places that already lost their soul.
Ibiza still conserves.
The poster speaks to me of the native
architecture of Ibiza; of the
churches, white, simple and far from the brass foils;
churches used over centuries as meeting places, for culture and
protection against invading
attacks.
It speaks of peasants,
ingrained into the Earth and ancestral costumed breadwinners to me.
It speaks to me of the nature and the beauty of simplicity, anything
other than the superficial and materialistic images this earth is also
comprises of.
Ibiza is a place of contrasts, of
opposites.
The past coexists with the latest novelties; respect for our Earth, with
the most elevated greed.
Old and new can coexist in calm harmony.
Yin and Yan of ourselves.
And perhaps this is one
part of its attractiveness.
When thinking of Ibiza, images
come to my mind, from a clear blue sky
in autumn, of small bathed
coves of calm waters, green
mountains, red soil sprinkled with
almonds trees, vines, olive trees
and white peasants houses.
Although it associates
also to the agglomerations of the summer, the uncontrolled, the wild
vice, to the destruction of its territory.
Yin and Yan.
The opposite ones.
Ibiza, place first chosen by hippies of the Sixties as nexus of
union between the West and Orient, like a remote
spiritual temple of materialism
which irremediably has been leading the world.
Refuge and paradise of so many fled.
Also for me, refuge and
paradise that fights to persist.
by IBIZA
GUIDE: Karina Perez Muros
Member
of the A.P.I.T.I.F
- Association of
OFFICIAL TOURIST GUIDES for Ibiza and Formentera
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