The Poble Nou de la Marina is usually the leader of the complementary offer of the old town before the tourist season. While in the rest of the port and la Marina most of the locals are working hard to get ready for the 2022 Season, in the pedestrian streets of this nineteenth-century extension they have been waiting for the tourists with their doors open for days.
This is the case of the accessories and decoration store Purnima, open since Friday. “Here we always open around this time, while in the other store we have in calle d’Enmig it is usually around April 15th,” details Alessandra Rabolini.
Rabolini sees great optimism among her neighbors for this 2022 Season, while she is wary of the effects that the redevelopment of several streets may cause. “Last summer was spectacular for the port, because we didn’t have so much competition, but this year there will be more offers in other areas and I think it’s going to be complicated to enter the city,” she warns.
Final details for the 2022 Season
A few meters away, in calle Aníbal, Pau Tugues and Sandra Aguilera are finishing the final details for the opening of D.Lain Shop, the brand of clothes they design themselves. This concludes a month of preparations, in which up to five people have been involved. “At the end of summer we emptied the entire store and now we have had to bring back all the goods, iron the pieces one by one and fit the alarms, create stock reports, paint walls and furniture, dismantle and clean the air conditioners and light bulbs,” says Aguilera.
The establishments in the old town usually invest a month’s work in getting ready for the season.
A few moments before the opening, Tugues is still busy putting up shelves and finishing decorating the store to achieve “a more eye-catching display”. “There is a great desire to open the 2022 Season, but also a need after being closed since October and the two years of covid,” he points out.
In their case, of the three stores they ran in the Marina before the pandemic, they ended up giving up two of them. “Covid arrived when everyone was preparing for the season, after a whole winter closed, and left us unable to work for another three months,” recalls Tugues. This summer, on the other hand, the expectations are good, “but let’s see if the Russians don’t end up screwing it up,” he jokes.
Free bus to the port
On Calle Castelar, Michel Oulion opened the doors of Feel Juice last week, a small place selling natural juices, crepes and waffles, now in its sixth season. “There are still few tourists, but April and May are always quiet months,” he notes. In his case, Oulion’s concern, more than the arrival of visitors to the island, is the ease of access to the old town, especially when the rest of Ibiza’s tourist areas will be back in full swing this summer.
“I only found out two months ago that there is a free bus from the [es Gorg] car park to the port. A neighbor told me about it and I was surprised, there are no signs informing people to use it”, says Oulion, outraged.
On the corner of calle Castelar and calle Sa Creu is one of the oldest businesses in the area, the clothing and footwear store Década Pou Nou. Its owner, Vicent Gisbert, opened its doors on March 20th and notes that this year there are quite a few establishments that are ahead of the usual dates.
“It seems that people are very enthusiastic about working after everything we’ve been through”. Gisbert shares that last summer, the old town benefited from the closing of the nightclubs, but specifies that, in 30 years of history of his store, “all the seasons have been very similar”.
Waiting for the nightclubs
The first line of the port is the one that seems to be in the least hurry to start the 2022 Season. At the end of calle Garijo, Sven Tancredi is hard at work sanding the furniture of the Base Bar, his family’s business. “We open on April 27th, because that weekend is the opening weekend of the nightclubs. After that, we will have a month with little work until June,” he announces.
In the parallel street, calle d’Enmig Jeff Guegan works at the same time in several premises. This weekend he will be serving drinks at the Arte del Mojito, while he hopes to have La Familia Ibiza ready in 15 days. “One I can open on my own, with the help of my wife, while the other is a bar-restaurant, with a cook, bartender and waiter,” he says. He is also preparing a men’s clothing store in another adjoining premises, in addition to the women’s fashion store designed by his wife.
Many of the entrepreneurs only dare to hire people who have already found housing on the island
Housing problem
The catering establishments face an added complication to the work of updating their premises every year in old buildings and repairing the effects of humidity. “When I posted the ad looking for staff, I received letters from very young people with no experience and who live thousands of kilometers away,” says Guillermo Vilches, of La Bodega y la Esquina, next to the Mercat Vell. As in all their sector, they only dare to hire people who have already found an apartment or a room. “In the end we have been lucky and the prospects are good, let’s hope we don’t depend on Putin,” Vilches confesses.
“We have to make sure that the people we hire have housing, because other years they have left from one day to the next and we were left hanging,” recalls Pilar Zambudio, from Olivo Mío. There are 38 staff in this restaurant in the Plaza de Vila and they have been preparing for the opening of the season this Friday for two months. “This is the most beautiful square in Spain, so we hope to be at full capacity,” she says.
For the full article, please visit Diario de Ibiza website here.