Long before the superclubs, Phoenicians founded a port on Ibiza in 654 BC
Ibiza is famous for summer clubbing, but its story began in 654 BC, when Phoenician settlers founded a port there. The island later stayed loyal to Carthage against Rome, spent centuries under Muslim rule, and was taken for the Crown of Aragon in 1235. Large parts of it are now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The island lies in the Mediterranean 150 kilometres from Valencia and covers 572.56 square kilometres, about one-sixth the size of Mallorca. It is the third-largest Balearic island by area but second by population. With Formentera it forms the Pityuses, from a Greek name probably meaning pine-covered islands. Phoenicians called it Ibossim, perhaps fragrance island for its aromatic plants, Romans knew it as Ebusus, and the Royal Navy wrote Iviça. Its highest point, Sa Talaiassa, reaches 475 metres.
Under Carthage the island made dye, salt, wool and garum fish sauce, and after 400 BC it drew the other Balearics into its trade. The Scipio brothers attacked it in 217 BC during the Second Punic War, yet it held firm, and the Carthaginian general Mago used it for supplies in 205 BC. A favourable treaty with Rome then let it keep Punic institutions and even its own coinage deep into imperial times.
Muslims conquered it in 902 and Berbers settled; for part of the 11th century it was governed jointly with Dénia on the mainland. Norway's King Sigurd I attacked it in 1110 on his way to Jerusalem, and a Norman fleet from Sicily sacked it in 1159. After the Aragonese conquest of 1235 the Muslim population was deported and settlers arrived from Girona. Local self-government lasted until Philip V abolished it in 1715.
Tourism has transformed the place. Nearly 6 million people passed through the airport in 2012, and the census population climbed from 88,076 in 2001 to 154,186 in 2021, partly because an amnesty registered many foreign migrants. Water shortages and strained infrastructure led to a sustainable tourism tax from 1 July 2016. The local Catalan dialect, Eivissenc, is co-official with Spanish, and the shells of failed ventures such as the Festival Club, open only three summers, dot the hills.
Source: Ibiza
