When the high season ends, Ibiza reveals a very different side from the one it promotes during the warmer months. Empty streets, closed shops and a much slower pace of life define winter on the island. This is how Barby Pinello, who lives in Playa d’en Bossa—one of the most tourist- heavy areas in summer—describes it in a post on her social media.
“This is Ibiza in winter: Playa d’en Bossa is completely closed”, she sums up. But beyond the shutdown of businesses, one of the main day-to-day problems is mobility. Public transport reduces both frequencies and operating hours, making life particularly difficult for those who work.
“The bus runs every half hour in the morning and once an hour in the afternoon. Many times I go to work hitchhiking, and every night, at half past eleven, I also get back that way because the bus no longer runs”, she explains. A situation that forces people to resort to hitchhiking as the only alternative in order to meet work schedules.
Even so, winter also has its positive side, as she points out. With the drop in tourism, accommodation prices fall significantly. “I’m paying €350 a month, half a block from the sea, here on the little hippie path”, she says—an unthinkable opportunity during the summer months and one of uncertain viability in winter. For this reason, as several comments on the post note, more and more people choose to come to the island in the off-season: “Many people come in winter to prepare—make contacts, find accommodation and good jobs—so they are well settled when the high season begins, in April or May”.
Far removed from the image of a permanent party, winter in Ibiza combines tranquillity and more affordable prices with persistent structural shortcomings, such as the lack of adequate public transport. A largely unseen reality, but a daily one for those who choose to live on the island once the summer lights go out.