A history of hospitality in Ibiza: a family oasis in the West End

Toni Torres Boned with his son, Toni Torres García | V.MARÍ

Toni Jr. pulls out his mobile phone and is seen on the screen with the bar’s three oldest customers. He is posing with his trademark uniform, reminiscent of a Newcastle or Juventus shirt, but it is actually an American football referee’s. To his right are Rex and Maria, a married couple from Liverpool, and to his right, a university professor from Montreal, in Sant Antoni nicknamed Jordi.

Toni, in the middle, with some clients in the 70s. | D.I.

The picture was taken in 2019 and it has not been possible to recreate it due to the covid pandemic. The Canadian has been coming to Sant Antoni for 60 years, from mid-April to September, and is now 90. “He has always come here for dinner every day,” Toni says. The couple from Liverpool, who they have visited several times, were family friends even before the Tamesis existed, as Toni Sr. knew them from his time at the now defunct Toni’s Bar, where he started working at the age of 16.

Ten years later, in 1971, he and his brother Pep opened the bar they had just built with their father, a construction worker. Two flats where part of the family lives completed the building. The history of the Tamesis also began with Pepe, a waiter, now deceased.

“Wagons were still passing by”, remembers the father. Sant Antoni was just starting to emerge as a tourist destination, although there were only about five bars in the neighbourhood then known as Sa Raval. “There was La Gitana, La Cueva, where there was live guitar music, the Babaloo and one that was run by a foreigner”. There was also the Music Bar, later called Joe Spoon, which closed last year and passed the baton to the Tamesis as the oldest bar in the area.

The first Tamesis staff, with Toni on the left. D.I.

“My brother didn’t really like the hospitality business, he was more into construction [a construction worker, like his father] and left the bar after a few years”. At the back of the building, the family built the Hostal Tunís, also at the beginning of the 70s.

“In addition to tourists, many construction workers also stayed there”. After the death of Toni Torres Boned’s father, the family divided the properties and he kept the bar, which retained the same original atmosphere, while Sa Raval was becoming the party area par excellence and later became known as West End.