Local Knowledge · Since 2015
Encyclopaedia Ibiza
Ibiza is one of the most written-about islands in the Mediterranean, and one of the least accurately described. This encyclopaedia is our attempt to describe it with precision, based on lived experience.
We are Alex and Virginie, co-founders of Neverland Properties. Between us, we have lived and worked on the island for over 25 years. Alex has been coming to Ibiza since the 1970s, when his family had a payés house here, and built his professional life in hospitality, including as hotel director at Atzaró until the early 2010s. Virginie leads the editorial work, is a licensed member of API Baleares, and contributes directly to the cultural and legal entries, with a background in monument restoration in Dalt Vila and training in traditional espardenyes craft.
The entries cover the aspects that tend to shape a stay on the island: culture, history, gastronomy, the seasons, sustainability, wellness, the legal framework of renting, and travelling with children. They are developed progressively and can be read independently, but together form a consistent body of knowledge about Ibiza.
None of this is researched from the outside. All of it is known from the inside.
Compiled by Alex & Virginie, co-founders | Neverland Properties Ibiza
© 2026 Neverland Properties Ibiza. All editorial content is original and may not be reproduced without permission.
Knowing Ibiza
Words & references that don’t translatePoc a poc
“Little by little” or “step by step” in Eivicenc, the dialect of Catalan spoken in Ibiza. The island’s unspoken operating philosophy, a pace of life that visitors initially resist and ultimately find themselves unable to leave behind.
Espardenyes
Traditional hemp-soled shoes crafted in Ibiza for centuries. Originally worn by payés farmers, they are also the shoe for dancing ball pagès, and serious dancers still invest in a handmade pair precisely because they last. One of the few surviving artisan trades of authentic Ibizan material culture.
More (1969)
Barbet Schroeder’s film, scored by Pink Floyd, shot entirely in Ibiza. The definitive cinematic document of the island’s counterculture moment, and the reason a certain kind of visitor still comes looking for something.
Ball pagès
Traditional Ibizan folk dance, performed at festivals with castañuelas and the characteristic atuendo payesas. Declared Intangible Cultural Heritage of Spain in 2012, and genuinely alive, not folklorised.
Todo queda a 20 min
Everything is 20 minutes away. The islander’s answer to any question about distance, and accurate enough most of the time.
Opening / Closing parties
The rituals that bookend the club season. Space’s closing, held in late September or early October depending on the year, was for two decades considered the emotional summit of the European summer. An era that has passed, but that defined what Ibiza meant to a generation.
Ibiza Reading List
A short annotated bibliography for those who want to understand the island before or after arriving.
Ibiza: Le Palais Paysan F. Joachim & Ph. Rotthier, illustrations de V. Gevers, AAM Éditions
The definitive architectural study of the traditional Ibizan payesa house. An essay on forms and techniques in archaic habitat that remains, decades after its publication, the most rigorous analysis of what makes Ibizan rural architecture genuinely distinctive in the Mediterranean.
El ball pagès d’Eivissa i Formentera Federació de Colles de Ball i Cultura Popular d’Eivissa
The primary reference on traditional Ibizan folk dance, its three forms (Sa curta, Sa Llarga, Ses nou rodades), its instruments, the atuendo payesas and the emprendada jewellery. Declared Intangible Cultural Heritage of Spain in 2012.
Isla negra Toni Montserrat, Plaza & Janés, 2023
A debut novel by an Ibiza-born author that transports the reader to the island in 1863, poor, rural, dark and entirely unlike the Ibiza of today. Inspired by a real unsolved double murder at the church of Sant Jordi, it is the most compelling literary portrait of the island’s forgotten past. Now in its third edition.