Ibiza Holiday Villas

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Winter or Spring?

Most people consider Ibiza to be a summer party destination that opens in May and shuts at the end of October each year. This is certainly true of the big nightclubs and most of the hotels, but our big sister island of Mallorca remains ‘open’ all year round.

How can this be?

Perhaps it’s a subconscious decision by the island’s indigenous population, despite the regularly stated efforts of the government to create all year round tourism. When you consider the numbers, it becomes easier to understand…

Ibiza’s resident population is a little over 130,000 but, when you factor in tourist visitors, this ‘population’ swells to well over half a million at any one time. By comparison, Mallorca’s resident population of 870,000 is barely tripled by its 1 ¾ million visitors in peak season. At the same time, Mallorca is seven times the size of Ibiza, so there’s much more room to accommodate everyone. Maybe Mallorca’s residents don’t feel the pressure so much.

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Or perhaps it’s because the Ibicencos value their idyllic winters so much that they really don’t want to share them? They refuse to risk spoiling their annual sojourn in the paradise that is an Ibiza winter. From the end of October the difference is palpable as the island suddenly slows down to the pace of the Ibiza of old, and emits a collective sigh of relief!

Gone are the traffic jams cluttered with coaches, lorries, taxis and dithering hire cars. You can park right outside your destination again, and the most commonly heard word is ‘mañana’…

We won’t be popular locally for disclosing this well kept secret, but the island is particularly stunning in the winter. We use the word ‘winter’ loosely because, following the occasional autumnal downpour, it’s actually more like a Northern European Spring with flowers springing up all over and those cloud galleons of the sky to decorate each sunset. It is often breathtaking, and then there are the beaches, too many to choose from, where in the sun and out of the breeze you can enjoy a picnic with only yourselves for company…

Between the trips to the beach there are regular fiestas doing the rounds of the island villages where the locals show us how they used to party, long before Ibiza took the concept global. The grand finale has to be the indescribable display of almond blossom in late January and February all over the island, and especially in Santa Inés (Agnès in Catalan)…

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Because the majority of the hotels are shut throughout the winter, growing numbers of villa owners in the booming private rental sector have decided to buck the trend and are making their villas and fincas ready and available for smart winter visitors.

The older traditional fincas need little improvement to cater for their winter visitors. They were built to be comfortable in both winter and summer even back in the days when you built your home from locally sourced stone, timber, lime and seaweed! The owners of more recently built villas across the island nowadays include underfloor heating or state of the art hot/cold air conditioning units to enable them to rent all year round.

So, if you fancy a winter break, take a look at the prices that apply ‘out of season’. You’ll be shocked to discover that villas cost as little as half, sometimes a third, of their normal summer price!

The problem in the past has been getting to Ibiza, but this has now been solved by the cut-price airlines. It is perfectly feasible to fly to Ibiza via either Madrid or Barcelona for €100 or less!