Ibiza After Dark: Pacha, Amnesia and the Superclubs

The story of Ibiza’s nights, from the hippie bars of the 1960s and the opening of Pacha in 1973 to Amnesia, Ku and Privilege, DJ Alfredo and the Balearic beat, the summer of 1987, Café del Mar’s sunsets, Pikes and the superclubs of Platja d’en Bossa, with the clubs and bars where the island goes out today.

Ibiza did not set out to become the world’s dance floor. It was a quiet island of white villages and pine-covered hills when the hippies arrived in the 1960s, and its first nightlife was a handful of bars. Within two decades its farmhouse clubs had invented a new way to dance, open-air and until dawn, and the whole of Europe followed. The thread of this story is the sun: Ibiza’s nights begin with a sunset and end with a sunrise.

The hippie years and the first clubs

The roots of Ibiza’s club culture lie in the hippie gatherings of the 1960s and 1970s, when the island’s venues were mostly bars. In June 1973 Ricardo Urgell, who had opened the first Pacha in Sitges, near Barcelona, in 1967, opened Pacha Ibiza by the harbour of Ibiza Town; its twin-cherry logo, designed by Yvette Montsalvatge in the early 1980s, is now known around the world.

In May 1976 a farmhouse near Sant Rafel, on the road between Ibiza Town and Sant Antoni, was leased to the philosopher Antonio Escohotado, and a co-founder proposed the name Amnesia. Nearby, a restaurant called Club San Rafael was sold and renamed Ku in 1979. In 1978 Tony Pike turned a farmhouse above Sant Antoni into Pikes, the hotel that would host the island’s most famous parties.

Amnesia, DJ Alfredo and the Balearic beat

In the mid-1980s an Argentine DJ, Alfredo Fiorito, known as DJ Alfredo, began to play an eclectic blend of dance music under the open sky at Amnesia. The style became known as Balearic beat, and Alfredo as its father. Ibiza, as the history of acid house records, was where the music first caught on in Europe and where the after-hours culture of today’s clubs began.

In the summer of 1987 Paul Oakenfold rented a villa on the island and hosted his friends Danny Rampling, Johnny Walker and Nicky Holloway. They went home to London determined to recreate what they had heard, and within a year Shoom, Spectrum and Trip had launched the Second Summer of Love. The island’s sound had changed British club culture for good.

Ku, Privilege and the superclubs

The 1980s circuit ran from Pacha to Ku to Amnesia, each club staying open later than the last. Ku became Privilege after a change of ownership in 1995, was renovated and expanded, and by 2003 Guinness World Records named it the world’s largest nightclub, covering 6,500 square metres and holding 10,000 people. From 1994 it was home to Manumission, the island’s most theatrical night.

Pacha kept its own style with Flower Power, a Saturday night of 1960s and 1970s music that began in 1981 and became the club’s best-known theme. Privilege closed after the 2019 season, but the superclub idea moved south to Platja d’en Bossa, where Space ran until 2016 and Hï Ibiza opened on the same site on 28 May 2017.

In 2003 Guinness World Records named Privilege the largest nightclub in the world, with room for 10,000.

Café del Mar and the sunset

Café del Mar opened on the rocks of Sant Antoni’s bay on 20 June 1980, and in 1991 its DJ José Padilla began the sunset sets that made the bar famous. Padilla compiled the first six Café del Mar albums between 1994 and 1999, and the series turned the Ibiza sunset into a sound recognised around the world; he died on 22 October 2020.

The ritual has hardly changed. Every summer evening the terraces along the shore fill an hour before sunset, the music slows as the sun drops behind the islands of the bay, and only then does the night head inland to the clubs.

Pikes, Ku and the pop stars

Ibiza’s clubs drew the stars, and the island’s openness drew everyone. In the 1980s Ku was a predominantly gay nightspot, and on 30 May 1987 Freddie Mercury and Montserrat Caballé filmed the video for Barcelona there. Wham! shot Club Tropicana at Pikes in 1983, and on 5 September 1987 Mercury celebrated his 41st birthday at the hotel with about 500 guests, a party still talked about on the island.

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Ibiza after dark today

The names of the story are still on the island. Pacha keeps its cherries by the harbour of Ibiza Town, Amnesia still fills its farmhouse at Sant Rafel, and on Platja d’en Bossa Hï Ibiza and the open-air stage of Ushuaïa, opened in 2011, carry the superclub tradition into the morning and the afternoon.

Café del Mar still plays the sunset in Sant Antoni, Pikes still stands on its hillside above the town, and the hippie spirit lives on at the Las Dalias market and the Punta Arabí hippy market. By day, beach clubs such as Blue Marlin, Beachouse and Experimental Beach set the island’s easy rhythm.

Our advice

Our advice: the big clubs open from late spring to early autumn, with opening and closing parties that sell out early, so book tickets online through the club’s own site, and expect the queues to start after midnight. Arrive at the sunset bars an hour early for a seat, take a licensed taxi or a bus rather than driving, and carry ID: doors are strict about age.