Photos from the Carefree Early Years of Ibiza’s Party Scene

A reveal­ing glance by one Span­ish pho­tog­ra­ph­er into the hal­cy­on ear­ly days of the Ibizan club­bing and par­ty scene, where nudi­ty and free­dom reigned from morn­ing to night.

Back in the 1950s, Cata­lan pho­tog­ra­ph­er Ori­ol Maspons found him­self on a beach in Ibiza, snap­ping shots of mod­el Monique Keller, who had brought a biki­ni straight from France. At the moment of the shoot a cou­ple of civ­il guards passed by, laugh­ing and com­ment­ing that such a look would get her banned from any beach in Spain. Per­haps that was true. At the time, the biki­ni was still a very new look, and Spain, under Fran­co, was still liv­ing under very old rules. But it was dif­fer­ent in Ibiza, and as it would con­tin­ue to become even more dif­fer­ent year after year, Maspons was there to get the whole pic­ture.

Ibiza has long been a mag­net for non-con­formists and artists, from those flee­ing Franco’s regime to Amer­i­can draft dodgers, to those sim­ply seek­ing to lose them­selves in a hedo­nis­tic haze. For about four decades, right up to the late ’80s, Maspons, a renowned pro­fes­sion­al pho­tog­ra­ph­er with an eye for the excep­tion­al, doc­u­ment­ed Ibiza’s wild par­ty and club­bing scene, which would even­tu­al­ly morph into the nightlife mec­ca we all know today.

Maspons’ son claims that his father picked up pho­tog­ra­phy “to flirt” – a noble pur­suit. He was a big deal in Spain’s pho­to world, shoot­ing for every­one from glam­orous fash­ion mag­a­zines such as the Span­ish edi­tion of Elle to Span­ish gonzo jour­nal­ist mag­a­zines, the type that pub­lished actress­es in the nude along­side inter­views with politi­cians, as well as gigs in adver­tis­ing and col­lab­o­ra­tions with the major artists and poets of Spain at the time.

Who bet­ter than Maspons, a man unfazed by nudi­ty and cre­ative free­dom, to chron­i­cle Ibiza’s care­free par­ty­go­ers on its nude beach­es and in its clubs? Before the island was tak­en over by today’s gar­gan­tu­an rave fes­ti­val scene, Maspons was there for the gold­en days of clas­sic insti­tu­tions like Pacha, Ku, and Amne­sia. Look­ing at these pho­tos, you can almost hear all the Ita­lo dis­co and acid house being spun at these clubs.

Tru­ly a sur­vey of the time, when unin­hib­it­ed exper­i­men­ta­tion and laid­back enjoy­ment com­bined on the sun-drenched beach­es or under the lights of the dance­floor. You can see every­one – Ger­man bik­ers, Amer­i­can hip­pies, British hol­i­day­mak­ers, even a man inex­plic­a­bly dressed from head to toe in a pink pan­ther suit pops up on mul­ti­ple occa­sions, charm­ing the ladies.

Maspons ini­tial­ly set out to doc­u­ment the island’s tra­di­tion­al life – stur­dy Fin­ca hous­es, doñas in tra­di­tion­al vil­lage shawls, and idyl­lic agri­cul­tur­al land­scapes. But as the par­ty scene explod­ed and glob­al cul­tures col­lid­ed on Ibiza’s shores, his eye shift­ed towards the new changes, specif­i­cal­ly the nightlife, cap­tur­ing a vibrant con­trast between the old and the new.

Ibiza offered a sanc­tu­ary where any­one could come and be them­selves with­out judg­ment, and Maspons, like so many oth­ers, was drawn back to this free­dom time and again. In 2011, just before his death, he donat­ed around 7,000 devel­oped pho­tos to Cat­alo­ni­a’s Nation­al Muse­um of Art. And recent­ly, thanks to a col­lab­o­ra­tion between gallery own­er Emma Salahi of Agony & Ecsta­sy and Maspons’ son, Alex, more pho­tos have emerged, strik­ing­ly beau­ti­ful, some in full col­or, cul­mi­nat­ing in an exhi­bi­tion and a new col­lec­tion pub­lished by IDEA.

It’s often said the hey­day of the Ibizan par­ty scene is not what it once was. Its hedo­nism and lais­sez-faire atti­tude towards nudi­ty and sex­u­al free­dom may have waned, the music scene over there today is pos­si­bly no longer the unique col­li­sion of sounds that cre­at­ed the likes of Balearic house, and now it only seems to attract the kind of crowd that would have balked at the lib­er­tine atti­tudes of yore. Despite that, Ibiza­’s essence remains in these incred­i­ble pho­tos, and it’s often worth liv­ing in the past to get a feel for what can be.

Maspons him­self felt the island had “lost its soul” by the late ’80s. His son, intro­duced to the island in the 80’s came to that same con­clu­sion in his own way recent­ly, stat­ing in one inter­view in 2021: “It was not the Ibiza that [my father] had known. I, who have just returned to Ibiza for the first time since 2000, and have seen the motor­way, the Ikea, and Zara, now say: Ibiza is over. But I’m sure that if I bring my 14-year-old son to the island, he’d go crazy like I went crazy in the 80’s. The Ibiza that one knows at one point in one’s life and falls in love with is the Ibiza that will remain in one’s mem­o­ry. But Ibiza evolves and has adapt­ed to what they want­ed to turn it into.”

So maybe it’s not all bad? Maybe it’s all just per­spec­tive. The beau­ti­ful weath­er is still there and the throngs of tourists that con­tin­ue to flock to Ibiza­’s par­ties tell us there’s still some­thing to dis­cov­er, even if it’s not in the form of nude hip­pies and guys in Pink Pan­ther suits.

“Ori­ol Maspons Ibiza”, pro­duced by Emma Salahi, is pub­lished and avail­able from IDEA Books now.