But along with the clubbing, Ibiza has also acquired a reputation in Britain as a locus of dangerous debauchery, fuelled by an abundance of alcohol and drugs.
Certainly, if you go to Ibiza looking for young Britons behaving badly you do not have to search very hard. Almost all the action is confined to one resort on the west of the island, San Antonio. The young, mainly English, package-holidaymakers make themselves conspicuous. The centre of mayhem is the so-called "West End-, a squalid junction of pubs and discos near the waterfront. Here, as one seasoned observer puts it, holidaymakers turn a rowdy Saturday night back home into every night on Ibiza. .
The beer is relatively cheap and drugs are not hard to find. By the early morning hours, fights are breaking out. But officials in both Britain and in Spain are inclined to play down rowdiness and violence in Ibiza. Many would argue that what goes on in San Antonio is nothing worse that what goes on in many town centres in Britain on a Saturday night. The Ibizans tolerate the excesses of San Antonio - and well they might. The money the tourists spend.
In any case, the idea that Ibiza as a whole has been "wrecked- by unruly British youngsters is wrong. Outside San Antonio, the rest of the islands host an increasingly rich, cosmopolitan and civilised tourist industry. He has consciously prised British teenagers out of his club with beer at £ 4 ($6) a bottle and an entrance price of anything up to £30. The crowd his club attracts tends to be older, and from other parts of Europe.
So Ibiza is, in effect, an island of two cultures, and their paths rarely cross. The ghetto will continue to attract most of the headlines, while the newly rich Spanish get on with their own lives. Already there are signs that the British are tiring of expensive Ibiza. " .
A permanent population of only 80,000 has long been a favourite destination for the British.
