Ibiza has now become an extreme case of tourist-driven transformation, where identity, landscape, and social balance are being dismantled by high-end tourism and speculative development, as journalist Joan Lluís Ferrer argues in his book Ibiza Masificada, which describes how the island has turned into a theme park for the wealthy, pushing out local residents, expropriating rustic land, and stripping access to housing and public spaces from those who don’t belong to the global elite; the shift is visible in the rise of luxury beach clubs, gated villas, private marinas, and a public discourse that values profitability over sustainability, turning Ibiza into a symbol of urbanism driven by spectacle and exclusion, where each season intensifies the housing crisis, environmental strain and social fragmentation, making it nearly impossible for essential workers—teachers, nurses, or civil servants—to live on the island they serve; Ferrer warns that this model of development, now normalized in Ibiza, could soon be replicated in other regions of Spain such as Málaga or parts of inland Andalusia, as tourism becomes less about culture and more about consumption; with up to 276 tourists per resident in high season, Ibiza is no longer a Mediterranean destination but rather a failed laboratory of hedonistic urban planning, where short-term gains eclipse any long-term vision for coexistence, and where locals find themselves alienated from their own land, forced into precariousness or displacement as their environment is reshaped by the logic of elite leisure and speculative value, creating a reality in which the island's authenticity becomes both a product and a memory.
