Ibiza (Spain) World Heritage Site: Socio-Urban Processes in a Touristified Space

Abstract

In recent years, there has been a big shift in analyses of historic centres, with the spotlight turning from the issue of urban degradation and the ageing population to studies of the risks associated with touristification and gentrification. The island of Ibiza is one of the Mediterranean’s leading tourist destinations, and its capital is one of the fifteen Spanish cities declared as World Heritage Sites (UNESCO). This study aimed to explore the touristification of Ibiza’s historic centre (a World Heritage Site). To do so, it explored three interrelated variables, the historic centre’s demographic dynamics, tourist accommodations, and heritage, through an analysis of heritage interventions derived from the UNESCO declaration. The methodology was based on the statistical use of demographic and tourism accommodation data on an inter-urban scale by mapping the main results, as well as on a study of the heritage data from the municipal catalogue. We concluded that the old city is in a state of change, both socially (with a demographic decline and drop in the native population) and culturally. All this reinforces its role as a supplier of complementary tourism services and as a museumized space for sun and sand resorts in the rest of the city and throughout the island.

1. Introduction

Historic centres have been a focus of urban debate for the last two decades, with a shift from analyses based on indicators of urban exclusion or vulnerability in the 1980s and 1990s to studies of the impacts of urban tourism and gentrification. For its part, tourism initially had a detrimental impact on heritage protection (1960–1980), although later, it was used as a key strategy in coveted processes of economic revitalization, leading to global renewal (from 1980). From 1990, however, some historic cities’ specialization or overspecialization in tourism has jeopardized their conservation and sustainability [1].

Hence, touristification has contributed to the thematization of historic centres, transforming them into new mass tourism destinations and focuses of second homes. On all too many occasions, heritage restoration has been tackled from a business perspective, adapting areas for the use and enjoyment of visitors and investors. Although the term “touristification” is a complex concept open to numerous different interpretations, in this paper it refers to the transformation of a place into a space largely dedicated to tourism, with all the effects that this involves [2]. This process, which can occur at a destination- and a resource-based level, entails the adaptation of a space in order to bring it into line with visitor needs, whether or not tourism is the dominant activity there. More recently, a far more limited notion with negative connotations has emerged (the one explored in this study), where touristification is often alluded to as a phenomenon that has impacts particularly strongly on cities, leading to a decline in the living conditions of their inhabitants due to excess visitor numbers and the ensuing repercussions [2].

Gentrification is another widespread phenomenon that has put many historic centres at risk (socially, economically, commercially, and scenically, as well as in urban-planning and housing terms, among others). It is a concept that can be interpreted in multiple ways, with different typologies and the involvement of complex interrelations. Ruth Glass coined the term in 1964 in Britain. Each phase of gentrification is demarcated by a particular constellation of political and economic conditions nested at larger geographical scales [3]. In its capacity as a new form of spatial segregation, gentrification is understood to mean the transformation of a working-class or vacant part of the city, in its inner or outlying areas, for upper-income residential or commercial use [4]. This involves the replacement of existing land users with new ones of a higher socioeconomic status, with changes in the built environment through reinvestment in fixed capital [4]. In Ibiza, tourism development is intimately linked to the social production of the urban space, and tourism is a force that fosters the gentrification of its historic centre.

Ibiza is a perfect municipality for studying these processes. In surface area, it is the second smallest municipality in the Balearic Islands (1117.93 km², ranking second after Búger) and the third most heavily populated (51,128 inhabitants in 2020, after Palma and Calvià). According to statistics from the Balearic Directorate-General for Tourism, Ibiza has a total of 14,125 official tourist beds (2021), and 588,217 travellers stayed in its hotels and tourism apartments in 2019. A total of 8,136,885 travellers passed through its airport in 2019 (a historical record), and its port was visited by a total of 399,130 cruise ship passengers (2019), marking a new record and constituting a 45% increase in relation to the previous year. La Vila (the name by which the city of Ibiza is known) stands out for its old city filled with listed buildings of different types and origins. Indeed, Ibiza is the only city in the Balearic Islands to feature an area declared a World Heritage Site (UNESCO). Within this framework of high tourist pressure, this study aims to explore the touristification of Ibiza’s historic centre, in particular the area declared a World Heritage Site. To do so, three clearly interrelated variables are analysed: demographic dynamics, tourist accommodations in the historic centre, and interventions to the heritage of Dalt Vila (the upper town) over twenty years after the UNESCO declaration was made (4 December 1999). We pose the hypothesis that its rich heritage and promotion as a World Heritage Site have acted as key factors in its gentrification and touristification. Our study helps to enrich the literature on heritage and tourism mainly by highlighting the impacts of tourism on World Heritage cities found in well-known tourist destinations, such as Ibiza, where touristification leads to changes in social and functional processes.

2. Theoretical Framework

2.1. World Heritage Cities: Midway between Heritagization and Tourism Promotion

Tourism is a key economic activity for Spain’s historic cities. Monuments and historic heritage have been used to attract visitors and capital alike. However, this tourism strategy—which has contributed so strongly over the last three decades to new facelifts for cities and to their economic revitalization—is now seriously jeopardizing the sustainability of many of them.

On the one hand, processes associated with touristification are turning historic centres into new mass tourism destinations and into key focuses of second homes. On the other hand, business approaches are being taken to heritage recovery. One of the most tangible consequences of this new type of gentrification-driven segregation is the local population’s forced displacement through evictions and foreclosures [5]. In the case of some Mediterranean cities, there is the additional risk of the historic centres’ conversion into suppliers of complementary sun and sand tourism services, as places for day-trippers. This entails concentrating all these tourism activities and services into just a few streets, with tourists returning to their all-inclusive hotels or cruise ship accommodations at night. This situation might be descriptive of our case study, the city of Ibiza.

Only relatively recently has interest been shown in combined analyses of tourism and gentrification in academic literature. The relationship between tourism and gentrification is an important issue in urban-planning and tourism studies. As with other consumer spaces, tourism gives rise to gentrification [6,7,8], and tourism gentrification is a critical shaping force in socio-economic and contemporary urban landscapes [9]. Some authors [7] described three different models of urban engagement with tourism—resort cities, historic tourist cities, and ‘converted’ cities—and [10] point out that “empirical evidence suggests that tourists do not only ‘push’ into neighbourhoods beyond the beaten path but that they are also increasingly ‘pulled’ into these areas”. Following Gotham’s first study [11] on tourist gentrification in New Orleans, many publications have explored the subject of displacement triggered for reasons that include residential, commercial, and urban renewal plans [12,13,14]; the impact of urban tourism on gentrification [15,16,17,18]; the influences of second homes and conflicts between tourists and local residents [19,20,21]; and, more recently, the impacts of holiday rentals through Internet platforms such as Airbnb [22,23,24,25,26], described as ‘Airbnb Syndrome’ [26]. Among these impacts, special attention must be paid to the effects of gentrification and touristification on World Heritage Cities. The authors of [27] explored the link between gentrification and tourism in their transnational capacities to transform the heritage of medium-sized World Heritage cities in the global south, such as the Mexican cities of Guanajuato and San Miguel de Allende. With their gentrification, boutique hotels, other luxury accommodations, and select businesses started to spring up alongside elite art and cultural facilities, helping to accentuate the cities’ inequalities. From a more global perspective, mention must also be made of studies linked to spatial planning [28,29,30]. As a future line of research, a research agenda should be developed to study the impacts of tourism at World Heritage destinations [31].

Indeed, reflections are needed on how to unite the promotion of tourism with the rationalization and control of visitor numbers in promotional policies. World Heritage cities are good case studies for assessing these dynamics. This designation implies the explicit recognition of a set of unique characteristics combined with heritage of outstanding historical value. Nonetheless, this worldwide network, which was originally conceived to protect these cities, places too much emphasis on their promotion [1]. The conservationist goals that gave rise to the World Heritage City designation have been relegated to second place and replaced with others more closely tied to their tourism promotion. When this distinction is awarded to a city, it is a potential source of wealth, with the projection of a new urban and tourism image. As a result, some of these cities have been under threat for decades, together with other historic Spanish cities, due to the intensive nature of this tourism given the difficulty involved in adapting historic centres to fit in with new tourism and cultural functions [32,33].

Our case study also involves two important variables that set it apart. The first variable is insularity since Ibiza stands out for its limited surface area and its social and environmental fragility. The second is its location on the periphery of tourism. This small Mediterranean island is dependent on the dynamics of powerful central and northern European urban networks (in financial, real estate, and tourism-related terms, among others). Towards the end of the last century, in a geographical context similar to that of Ibiza, [34] analysed the sociocultural and environmental impacts of tourism in the Aegean islands, showing that such was the effect that it was jeopardizing the region’s sustainability. In a comparative study of the island of Crete (Greece) and the historic centre of Bangkok (Thailand)—two good examples of islands on the peripheries of tourism (of central northern Europe, on the one hand, and Austria and Japan, on the other)—[17] defines them as crypto-colonial states heavily dependent on tourism to buttress their crisis-assault economy and as places that can ill afford to undermine their own tourist industries.

Spain has fifteen historic centres that are totally or partly included in a World Heritage Site. In 1993, six city councils created the Group of Spanish World Heritage Cities (CPHE), today made up of these fifteen cities and Ibiza, which joined them in September 2002. Since then, Ibiza has taken part in joint promotional campaigns, projects, and initiatives with the other cities. The purpose of all these activities is to act in a coordinated way in the protection of their historical and cultural heritage and in the maintenance and reinforcement of certain ways of life in these places. However, this group largely acts as an urban cooperation network, prioritizing heritage protection and conservation on the one hand, (when a more holistic integrative vision of a historic city is needed in social, urban-planning, and economic terms) and positioning them in world cultural and urban tourism markets on the other, sometimes overlooking the impacts that this might have on the heritage to be protected. This is illustrated by the three areas into which the CPHE is organized: City and Heritage; Education and Culture; and Representation, Promotion, and Tourism. In Ibiza, the activities that are carried out within the framework of the CPHE group can be seen on the website shared by all the participant cities, as well as on the municipality’s own website.

Studies of Dalt Vila’s old city have traditionally been approached from archaeological [35,36], architectural [37,38,39,40], historical [41,42] and military perspectives [43,44,45], but rarely in terms of tourism [46]. In recent years, this shortcoming has partly been rectified in studies by [33,47,48,49]. The latter have analysed the historic centre from tourism and cultural perspectives, evaluating its evolution from the moment that it was declared a World Heritage Site.

2.2. Dalt Vila’s Rich Heritage: A Strong Point in Ibiza’s Candidacy as a World Heritage Site

Dalt Vila’s size and its level of conservation were strong points in Ibiza’s international recognition by the UNESCO [46]. Of the five criteria on which the declaration was founded, three are culturally based, and two directly relate to this central neighbourhood [50]. These are the second criterion, inspired by the fact that the 16th-century fortifications bear unique witness to Renaissance military architecture, which was a strong influence on cities in the new world; and the fourth, based on Dalt Vila’s role as a settlement for Phoenicians, Arabs, and Catalans.

Dalt Vila’s heritage, which has mainly been the object of interventions over the last twenty years, is from different historical periods [51]. Features of particular interest from the Middle Ages include Puerta de la Portella, the only remaining gate of the original six from the period, and some of the towers that were used to defend the city or castle, such as the Torre de Homenaje (keep) or Torreta [44]. Some of the city’s most emblematic buildings date back to the 14th to 15th centuries, such as the Universitat (municipal corporation), the Curia (courthouse), and the cathedral, while the fortification with bulwarks, started initially by Italian engineer Juan Bautista Calvi and continued and extended by his colleague Jacobo Paleazzo (“el Fratín”), is from the Renaissance period. The fortification has three gates (Puerta del Mar, Puerta del Campo, and Puerta del Socorro), all still intact and in good condition [45]. In the 18th century, military buildings continued to proliferate, the district known as La Peña started to spring up, and the existing district of La Marina grew in size [44]. Finally, in the 19th and 20th centuries, important urban changes were made, and the first travellers arrived, including Archduke Ludwig Salvatore, who promoted the city centre’s rich cultural heritage and, by extension, that of the whole island. In 1909, the first guidebook for tourists was published.

Among Dalt Vila’s identified heritage, one of its most privileged spots is the 16th-century walled area—the focus of recent interventions—commissioned by King Carlos I to defend the east coast from continuous Turkish and African attacks. These defensive walls, as well as the Santa María de Ibiza Cathedral, are the monuments to which the greatest reforms have been made, based on a master plan for each one drawn up by a multidisciplinary team. While the plan for the defensive walls has museumized them, the plan for the cathedral has dynamized the old building and led to the creation of a diocesan museum. Both works of architecture play predominant roles, even though they stand close to other historic buildings with new functions, as is the case of the old armoury, which is now the Contemporary Art Museum; the Universitat (municipal corporation), El Salvador Chapel, and Santa Tecla Bulwark, which all now house the Archaeological Museum; and Casa Llaneres, which is now the seat of the Balearic Architects’ Association. Over ten years ago, work began on the refurbishment of the castle and Almudaina buildings (i.e., the castle, keep, and governor’s house) in order create the first Balearic parador (state-run hotel), although the project was suspended for a long time due to the discovery of important archaeological remains in 2011. This historic ensemble occupied by Punic, Roman, and Arab settlers and used as the island’s seat of government for most of its history is now being refurbished to accommodate wealthy tourists. The new parador, which is expected to open in 2022, will have 72 rooms, and it will feature an interpretation centre, an outdoor pool and sun terrace, a multipurpose room, and an underground car park outside the defensive walls between the San Bernat and San Jordi Bulwarks. The refurbishment work is funded by Turespaña, a body attached to the Spanish Ministry for Industry, Tourism, and Trade (https://www.eivissa.es/portal/index.php/es/ciudad, accessed on 5 April 2022).

Given the singularity and importance of Dalt Vila’s monuments, it is important to pose the challenge that tourism represents in their protection. In the space of a few short years, the spotlight has suddenly been turned on these once overlooked items of heritage in the belief that they should somehow coexist with the most modern, cosmopolitan practices, each with their own language.

3. Materials and Methods

We explored socio-urban changes to Ibiza’s historic centre by gathering quantitative data for two types of variables (demographic and tourism data) and by analysing heritage interventions by the public authorities mainly focused, as we understood it, on promoting a raised awareness of the values of these items of heritage and on their touristification as historical and cultural attractions. At a demographic level, we worked primarily with data for the resident population (foreign residents, residents born outside the island, etc.) in order to gain an insight into socio-urban changes. At a tourism level, we focused on data for hotel supply (by type) and its spatial location.

We realize that these processes could be analysed through other variables, but in Ibiza’s case, there were valid reasons for using these indicators. Firstly, as demonstrated in other historic centres in the Balearic Islands [5], demographic changes and tourism-related ones (in our case, analysed through the accommodation supply) are directly interrelated. Secondly, in other recent studies [52,53], inequality in the city of Ibiza has been analysed by examining relations among the foreign population by nationality, income level, and housing price. Thirdly, it is important to study heritage interventions in a place that has been declared a World Heritage Site mainly because gentrification has had a longstanding and symbiotic relationship with public policy, beginning during the first wave of gentrification (1960s to 1970s) and continuing today, albeit in a different vein. Gentrification has become an active part of public policy based on a ’gentrification blueprint´ that is contextually adjusted [54].

Demographic variables reflect trends in the population and, in this case, how a city that has grown in importance, both economically and through acknowledgement of its heritage, is steadily losing its local population with a growing influx of residents from outside the island. The main source of this data was the continuous population census (Instituto Nacional de Estadística, INE). Using statistics on official tourism accommodation for hotels, tourism apartments, rural hotels, and holiday homes, we demonstrated the city’s touristification and how the historic centre fit into this process. The data we used were for September 2021, the most recently compiled figures by the Ibiza Island Council (Dept. of Tourism Planning). The accommodations’ location, categories, and opening dates, as well as the distribution of the tourist beds, were some of the variables we used to assess and diagnose the city’s level of touristification. We believe that these social and economic changes could be tied in with the touristification of the island as a whole and, with Ibiza’s enhanced, reinforced attraction as a destination, tied in with the World Heritage declaration. As a result, we analysed all the restoration, refurbishment, and museumization projects carried out for Dalt Vila’s main monuments. This information was taken from the municipal catalogue.

The accommodation data’s territorialization on an intra-urban scale was a key factor in demonstrating these processes. The whole municipality was mapped mainly for contextualization and comparative purposes, although this was conducted individually in the case of the historic centre. Lastly, although it is important to study what is happening in the urban part of the area declared a World Heritage Site (Dalt Vila), the analysis was extended to the whole of the historic centre. In accordance with the approved spatial plans, this was made up of the Dalt Vila, La Penya, and La Marina districts and a small part of the urban expansion area known as Vara de Rei.

4. Results

4.1. Urbanization Process, Urban Structure, and Refurbishment Plans in Ibiza: A Summary

The ancient island of Ibosim was founded by the Carthaginians in 654 BC. Numerous settlers of Mediterranean and central European origin went on to occupy this small but strategically located island, including Romans, Vandals, Byzantines, Visigoths, and Normans, until in 902, it came under Arab rule and was renamed Madina Yabisah. When the Christian conquest of the island came to an end in 1235, it passed from a period of splendour to an economic and cultural decline from which the island took centuries to recover. This precarity probably largely contributed to the conservation of its superb heritage. Successive Turkish attacks on the city in the 16th century forced King Felipe II to adopt Italian Renaissance defensive techniques. The Italian engineers Juan Bautista Calvi and Jacobo Paleazzo (also known as “el Fratin”) drew up two plans for the city’s fortification. This geometrically precise work of Renaissance military engineering encircles the city, giving Ibiza its characteristic morphology [1]. Unlike other Balearic cities, Ibiza did not demolish its Renaissance walls. Indeed, this possibility was never even contemplated. The topographical conditions of the walled area hindered the city’s expansion, but the demolition of the walls was not a necessity. On the one hand, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, there was little economic activity of any importance, there was no real middle class, the population fell (with a drop of 102 inhabitants between 1900 and 1910), and there was not much demand for new urban land [55]. On the other hand, Ibiza already had a big district outside the defensive walls called La Marina. This area on the outskirts monopolized the trading and economic activities formerly centred in Dalt Vila. Hence, the city became socially and economically segregated: while Dalt Vila was the place where property owners, military officers, and religious figures lived, fishermen and traders could be found in La Marina and La Penya. It was not until 1912, the same year that modernizations to the port ended with the inauguration of its eastern dock, that the urban expansion area known as Vara de Rei was approved [56].

In short, the city underwent no industrial revolution, and its urban development process was slow and discontinuous. However, in the late 19th century, the island and its city were discovered by the Romantic movement and the first travellers. From the mid-20th century, the city also reacted to pressure from tourism. While urban expansion areas were added to the city of Ibiza, coastal tourist resorts were also developed in the southwest (Les Figueretes and Platja d’en Bossa) and northeast (Talamanca and the waterfront promenade to the north of the bay). When the second World War came to an end, Ibiza became one of Europe’s leading tourist destinations [1], and today it is one of the world’s top tourist centres.

Ibiza’s historic centre was declared a Historical and Artistic Ensemble in 1969. However, in a more global integrative approach, the two special restoration plans approved in 1994 and 1997 incorporated other districts outside the city walls, with an urban makeup of contrasting morphological characteristics from different periods in history. Hence, the historic centre is made up of Dalt Vila (inside the city walls), the district outside the city walls known as La Marina (16th century), the suburban district called La Penya (17th to 18th centuries), and part of Vara de Rei, the city’s urban expansion area (1912). Finally, in 1999, the UNESCO declared the historic centre a World Heritage Site based on cultural and natural criteria (“Ibiza, biodiversity and culture”). This area includes the fortifications and Dalt Vila, the Phoenician ruins of La Caleta, and the Punic-Phoenician necropolis of Puig des Molins, in addition to Les Salines nature reserve in Ibiza, Formentera, and their meadows of Neptune grass (Posidonia) (Figure 1).

Within the framework of 1980s policies to protect and renovate historic centres, the 1987 Urban Plan (PGOU, according to its Spanish acronym) proposed the creation of three special plans for this part of the city. Two have been approved: the Special Plan for the Protection and Inner Reform (PEPRI) of La Penya, La Marina, and the Urban Expansion Area (1994) and the Special Plan for the Protection and Inner Reform of Dalt Vila-El Soto (1997). A third affects the Puig des Molins archaeological site, catalogued as a buffer area for the historic centre in the 1969 declaration. In May 2007, the Special Plan for the Protection of Puig des Molins and its Area of Influence was provisionally approved. In 2017, a specific amendment to the PEPRI for La Penya, La Marina, and part of Vara de Rei was approved. The 2009 Urban Plan did not propose any new inner reform plans that would affect the historic centre, although it boosted the ones already in force. For instance, twelve council houses were earmarked for La Penya, and the preservation of Puig des Molins and the green areas of Mirador and El Soto were advocated in their original conditions. In the Technical Report on Ibiza’s Historical and Artistic Heritage, the high level of building development permitted in the 1987 urban plan on the eastern promontory of Puig des Molins was rejected and, by extension, in the Puig des Molins intervention area.

The states of conservation, functions, and makeups of the three districts covered by the PEPRI for La Marina, La Penya, and Vara de Rei vary considerably. La Penya is characterized by a high level of social and architectural neglect. However, given its location, it is particularly appealing to the tourism and real estate sectors, so it is under substantial speculative pressure. La Marina, on the city’s historic seafront, features several hotels and leisure facilities for tourists. It is clearly economically buoyant in contrast with the state of its historical and artistic heritage and, above all, its housing, which are not easily reconcilable with those other functions and their sometimes very negative impact on cultural heritage. The PEPRI starts out by admitting how hard it is to unite its different residential, commercial, cultural, and service-related functions. Although some of the plan’s main measures are interesting, they are only partly developed, and they tend to be influenced by tourism and real estate interests, which are mentioned on numerous occasions. Its proposals include promoting the districts’ residential role, the provision of public services, the revival of empty areas that are either abandoned or rarely used by the public, initiatives relating to accessibility and circulation (the elimination of vehicle traffic and the conservation of one means of access: Anníbal Street-“Farmacies”), and interventions to the districts’ waterfront areas [58]. In short, without other more holistic measures, these urban-planning and architectural proposals cannot manage to limit speculative pressure and gentrification [56].

The projects envisaged in the Dalt Vila-El Soto PEPRI have been largely executed. Noteworthy efforts have also been made to equip the streets with urban infrastructure, to renovate housing, and to carry out urban development projects and the restoration and refurbishment of items of heritage. The restoration of the Puerta del Mar gate, (1991–1992), the refurbishment of the Contemporary Art Museum (1990–1994), and the restoration of the parapet of Santa Lucía Bulwark, (2002) were some of the first municipal initiatives in the field of heritage restoration, although other public bodies, such as the Spanish Ministry for Culture, the Ibiza Island Council, the Church, and the Architects’ Association, have also sponsored other interventions, such as the restoration of Hospitalet Church (1998), alterations to the Archaeological Museum (1994–1995), the cathedral’s restoration (1993 and 2020), archaeological work and excavations at the castle (1998–2002), and the refurbishment of Can Llaneres (1994–1995).

Nonetheless, the PEPRI does not seem to have invested the same energy in tackling tourism pressure to Dalt Vila, conflicts in its different uses, its museumization, the growing numbers of second homes, and once again, gentrification. This process of gentrification has gone hand-in-hand with the displacement of the local population. In the early years of the 21st century, it was estimated that, of Dalt Vila’s 800 homes, only one-fourth were lived in all year around [59]. Of Dalt Vila’s 624 residents in 2001, only about 200 of them lived there for the whole year [59]. Today, it has a population of just over 700 people. This process can be explained by the rising price of housing and the neighbourhood’s gentrification.

To sum up, the old city is faced with a complex scenario, due to different variables: its rich heritage; high real estate value, heavy tourism, and real estate pressure; and the international protection that has converted the whole area encompassed by the UNESCO declaration (Figure 2) into a mass-tourism product.

4.2. A Museumized City: Salient Interventions to Dalt Vila’s Heritage following the World Heritage Site Declaration

On 4 December 1999, the UNESCO included the category “Ibiza, Biodiversity and Culture” on its World Heritage list: a distinction that is a good vehicle for promoting the capital’s attractions and, by extension, those of the whole island, as well as for combatting Ibiza’s clichéd worldwide associations with sun and sand, beaches and partying. This declaration was the perfect way of drawing attention to Ibiza’s culture, as demonstrated by the rise in cultural tourism since then. Although there is no specific official data on this tourist segment and Ibiza’s cultural centres do not keep a record of visitor numbers, the increase in cultural and heritage facilities and confirmation of this fact by the city and the island’s technical experts and policy managers bear witness to this fact.

The area declared a World Heritage Site by the UNESCO and its surroundings have been the focus of the attention of Ibiza City Council’s Heritage Department and, right from the outset, it undertook the restoration and conservation of all items of heritage, making them accessible to people and raising awareness of their value. The City Council’s Communication Department undertook the task to inform citizens of municipal projects and decisions, in particular initiatives relating to the Renaissance city walls. A special plan was drafted for restoration work in collaboration with Fundatur based on the Ibiza Master Plan for the city walls.

A second body involved in promoting, coordinating, and funding different interventions to the said heritage was the Ibiza World Heritage Consortium, founded on March 28th, 2001, by the Ibiza City Council, the Ibiza Island Council, and the Balearic Government, which each provided equal amounts of finance [46]. Its objectives could be summarized into three main ones [50]:

• To promote and fund the execution of work and the provision of services and infrastructure in general, together with suitable means of transport and communication networks relating to the World Heritage declaration.
• To promote the coordination of investment by public authorities into the necessary work or the provision of services and infrastructure.
• To promote cultural initiatives and projects aimed at the conservation of historical heritage.

Hence, following the declaration, the Ibiza City Council and the Consortium supervised the main interventions to Dalt Vila’s heritage. The Group of World Heritage Cities was also involved through the dissemination of active tourism programmes and the promotion of items of heritage and related activities [50]. The objectives listed above were put into practice through a series of interventions of differing scopes, with an increase in their numbers from 2006 (

Table 1. Interventions to refurbish and restore Dalt Vila’s monuments as a result of the World Heritage declaration (2001–2022). Source: own, based on [50] and Ibiza City Council.

Related Monument	Promoted by	Current Use
Restoration of Can Botino Palace (2006)	Ibiza City Council and Ibiza World Heritage Consortium	Administrative use and the main seat of Ibiza City Council.
Dominican church and monastery (2014)	Ibiza City Council and Ibiza World Heritage Consortium	Administrative use (municipal offices), religious use (liturgical services in the church), and cultural use (exhibitions in the chapterhouse organized by the Contemporary Art Museum).
Restoration and archaeological follow-up of the Casa de la Curia (old courthouse) (2007)	Ibiza World Heritage Consortium	First, it was used as an interpretation centre for the city walls and then as a tourist information office; since 2007, it has housed the Madina Yabisa Interpretation Centre, which focuses on the period of Moslem rule.
Intervention at the armoury and old warehouses to extend the Contemporary Art Museum (2012)	Spanish Ministry for Culture, Ibiza City Council, and Ibiza World Heritage Consortium	Cultural facilities and Ibiza Contemporary Art Museum.
Restoration of Ibiza’s Renaissance city walls under the Master Plan (2001–2003)	Ibiza City Council	Public leisure purposes and image-related uses.
Restoration of the San Pere (2007) and San Jaume (2008) bulwarks	Ibiza World Heritage Consortium, and the Balearic Government	Cultural use: San Pere is used for concerts (upper embankment) and for informative historical material about Dalt Vila (City Wall Interpretation Centre), and San Jaume is used as a vantage point and as a setting for museumizing Dalt Vila. The casemates of both bulwarks both contain exhibition spaces.
Restoration of San Jordi Bulwark (2015–2016)	Spanish Ministry of Public Works and Ibiza City Council	Public space and vantage point.
Restoration of San Bernat Bulwark (2011–2012)	Spanish Ministry of Public Works and Ibiza City Council	Public space and museumized casemates.
Interventions at various points in Dalt Vila (2003–2007)	Ibiza World Heritage Consortium	Public space, cultural facilities, and varying museumization initiatives.
Intervention towards the castle’s infrastructure (2007)	Ibiza World Heritage Consortium	Maintenance operations.
Restoration of Portal Nou gate (2008–2009)	Spanish Ministry of Public Works and Ibiza City Council	Public space, cultural facilities, and entry gate to Dalt Vila’s walled area.
Reform and restoration of Portal de Ses Taules gate (2008–2009)	Spanish Ministry of Public Works and Ibiza City Council	Public space, cultural facilities, and main entry gate to Dalt Vila’s walled area.
Restoration of the arsenal of Santa Lucía Bulwark (2014)	Ibiza City Council	Cultural facilities and multipurpose space for exhibitions and other cultural events.
Construction of a block of council houses on Santa Creu street (2009)	Ibiza City Council	Municipal exhibition room on ground floor.
Refurbishment of a building on San Ciriac street (2006)	Ibiza City Council and Balearic Government	Headquarters of Ibiza City Council’s workshop school.
Redesign and extension of Ibiza Contemporary Art Museum (2007–2012)	Ibiza World Heritage Consortium, Spanish Ministry for Culture, and Ibiza City Council	An exhibition space housing remains of the old Punic city found at San Joan Bulwark and part of the cemetery of the old Moslem city.
Refurbishment of Ibiza and Formentera Archaeological Museum (2011–2012)	Spanish Ministry for Culture and Sport and Ibiza City Council	Exhibition space: the museum stands in a group of early medieval buildings under Plaza de la Catedral made up of the former Chapel of San Salvador, the Universitat (municipal corporation), and the casemate of the Santa Tecla Bulwark. It belongs to the Spanish Ministry for Culture and is run by the Balearic Government.
Reforms to the Diocesan Museum (1999–2006)	Ibiza World Heritage Consortium and the Bishopric	Cultural use: the museum is in the sacristy and chapterhouse of Ibiza Cathedral.
Creation of Puget Museum (2007)	Spanish Ministry for Culture and Ibiza City Council	Cultural use: the museum stands in a mansion known as Can Comasema. It is co-run by the Ibiza City Council and the Spanish Ministry for Culture.
The transfer of the Historical Archives and Newspaper Library to Can Botino (2008)	Ibiza City Council	Cultural use: for depositing and consulting archival records.
Refurbishment of the castle and Almudaina (2008–2022)	Spanish Ministry for Industry, Tourism, and Trade (Turespaña)	Parador Nacional de Turismo (state-run hotel), tourism facilities, and use as hotel.
Archaeological work in the subsoil of Dalt Vila (2018)	Ibiza City Council and Balearic Government	Archaeological excavations supervised by the Ibiza City Council’s Heritage Department.
Restoration of Casa Broner (La Penya district) (2012)	Ibiza City Council and Balearic Government	Multipurpose space for cultural exhibitions and acts.
Refurbishment of the military headquarters (2011)	Spanish Ministry of Defence, Spanish Ministry for Culture, Balearic Government, and Ibiza Island Council	The seat of the University of the Balearic Islands, the Ibiza Sound and Image Archives, and the Ibiza and Formentera Advanced Studies Centre.

).

The interventions have mainly focused on the city walls, the castle, and museums located in Dalt Vila, given that these items of heritage help to make the whole city so unique. Due to their nature and the characteristics of the soil, archaeological work also had to be conducted, including surveys and excavations, mostly in public areas. Likewise, preliminary interventions to the buildings led to subsequent alterations and adaptations to make them more accessible and to offer better service to visitors. As shown in Table 1, from the year 2000, work was scheduled for different years. From 2007, there was an increase in the rate of these interventions, with numerous simultaneous projects financed thanks to an increase in the Ibiza City Council’s budget and through funding from the Spanish Ministry for Culture and the Spanish Ministry for Public Works. Given the scope of this work, particularly in the case of the city walls and castle, it was a lengthy process, and some separate projects were carried out for different areas of the same monuments.

In addition to interventions to monuments, other projects focused on humanizing and improving the city, for instance, the pedestrianization of numerous streets, the concealment of rubbish skips, the underground concealment of cables, the standardization of road surfaces, the renewal of the sewage networks, the modernization of the water supply network, and the installation of storm drains and electricity supply networks [60]. As for promotional activities, mention must be made of investment into highlighting the importance of the historical ensemble, including the modernization of signage; the publication of leaflets, guides, and audio-visual material with information about the heritage; the introduction of an intense programme of cultural activities aimed at facilitating its interpretation; and a new lighting plan under the Master Plan aimed at enhancing the ensemble and turning the city walls into a shop window for the city [50].

4.3. The Population’s Drift Away from the Old City: Gentrification

Unlike other World Heritage historic cities, the human and functional pressure to which Ibiza’s old city is subject is relatively unrelated to the promotion of its heritage as a key tourism attraction. There are several reasons for visiting Ibiza, but the attraction of its heritage is not the main one. Nightlife, beach tourism, and an equally unsustainable, more elite category of tourism are some of the pull factors of both the island and city of Ibiza, which tend to become merged into one single place in people’s minds. In response to the economic demands of this specialist economy, Dalt Vila has become a museumized space, with complementary services for deluxe vacations and sun and sand tourists from all over the island. During the summer, the streets are very busy, and almost all its homes are occupied. Tourism is transforming Dalt Vila into a museumized visitor attraction and a focus of mass tourism consumption.

Two other districts in direct contact with Dalt Vila also suffer from some of its externalities. Due to La Penya’s state of social and architectural neglect, it is partly off the tourist circuit. La Marina’s case is different. This part of the city’s old waterfront area features some hotels, but it is mainly a leisure area for tourists. Harbour passenger traffic was moved from La Marina to the new docks at Botafoc. This former function has now been replaced with others associated with luxury tourism, particularly after the construction of the Sovren Ibiza marina, with room for 16 megayachts of lengths between 60 and 185 metres. Hence, La Marina is clearly economically buoyant in contrast with the state of its historical and artistic heritage, given the district’s aforementioned functions and their sometimes very negative impact on the local heritage. All these characteristics play a decisive role in making it the historic centre with the least aged population of all the Balearic’s main ones, with the highest rate of foreigners and the lowest percentage of first homes (

Table 2. Population and housing (census sections) in the historic centres of Balearic cities ¹.

	Population (2020)	% Foreign Population (2020)	% Population over 64 Years Old (2020)	Total no. of Homes (2011)	% First Homes (2011)
Palma	24,194	20.77	15.99	12,855	76.37
Maó	921	18.78	20.41	535	SD *
Ibiza	2042	40.06	13.22	1670	65.56

¹ It was not possible to include Ciutadella (in Minorca) because there was no coincidence between the scope of the Special Plan for the Protection of the Historic Ensemble or the old city inside the walls and the demarcations of the census sections. * SD: no data. Source: own from the Spanish Statistics Office’s 2020 Census of Residents and the 2011 Population and Housing Census.

).

The census district that included Ibiza’s historic centre was the only one of the three into which the city is divided that underwent a drop in its population between 2007 and 2020 (−11%). In a municipal context of demographic growth, the populations rose by 73% and 11% in the other two districts [52]. The historic centre—the one that is experiencing the biggest demographic decline—was also the one with the highest number of foreign residents registered on the census in 2020, and particularly important in analyses of social change in the historic centre, it was also the one with the highest rate of foreigners from the global north. In the census section that included Dalt Vila and the port districts of La Marina and La Penya (both outside the city walls), foreigners from the global north accounted for 23% of the total population (2020). That is, the drop in the population in this part of the city was partly offset by migratory arrivals, above all from more developed countries. In a framework of touristification and gentrification, these processes are a symptom of the social change in which the old city has been immersed for years.

Another indicator of these changes is the resident population of the city of Ibiza born outside the island, whose share rose from 58.37% in 2003 to 63.20% in 2020. This trend was reproduced in almost all the census sections, with high rates in the most gentrified areas in the northeast of the city (the waterfront and Talamanca), as well as in the different neighbourhoods that make up the historic centre, with a figure of over 60% in all of them (Figure 3). In this part of the city, over the last two decades, there has been a drop in the local population and an increase in the percentage of residents born outside the island. Between 2003 and 2020, the total local population fell by 2.44%, and the share of people born outside Ibiza rose by 11.07%. In 2020, 64.74% of the historic centre’s residents were not native to the island, a percentage slightly above the municipal average (63.20%) (Figure 4).

These sociodemographic changes have had different social impacts, and one of the most important is the rental price of housing [52]. The census sections for the historic centre were among those with the highest rental prices in the municipality, and access to housing is a serious social problem with no easy solution.

4.4. A Holiday City: Little Available Accommodation in an Area Dedicated to Complementary Leisure Services

Taking data for September 2021, the small municipality of Ibiza had 14,125 official tourism beds. By type, there was a predominance of hotels (68 hotels and 9713 hotel beds) and tourist apartments (47 and 4119 beds), followed at a far distance by 43 holiday homes with 273 beds (classified as VTV, vivienda turística vacacional, or ETV, estancia turística vacacional) and a rural hotel with 20 beds. These accommodations were concentrated on the tourist coast from the well-established nucleus, the emerging resort of Platja d´en Bossa, and the mature resort of Platja des Figueretes (in the compact part of the city to the south of the urban expansion area) to the more gentrified waterfront area on the eastern sidewith much lower figures, and Platja de Talamanca (Figure 5). These last two places form part of the buffer area of the demarcated World Heritage Site. Unlike Palma [5], the historic centre has not been affected by the current trend for new high-category boutique hotels with a limited number of beds, taking advantage of their position and the surrounding heritage for their promotion.

There were relatively few hotels in the historic centre, and they were of an inferior standard and old. Only one was a five-star hotel; nine of them (out of a total of 12) were guesthouses or one-star hotels. Over half of them opened in the 1990s, and the last two opened in 2006. Among the different neighbourhoods that make up the old city of Ibiza, Dalt Vila had the most hotel accommodations in terms of the number of hotels and hotel beds. La Penya had a guesthouse, and La Marina, as a very important shopping and leisure area, had just three low-category hotels. There were few tourist apartments since these are more typical of beach areas, and they were old and inferior in category, similar to most of the hotels (

Table 3. Characterization of tourist accommodations in the historic centre of Ibiza (September 2021). Source: own, based on statistics by Ibiza Island Council.

		Total (Beds)	Decade of Inauguration			Category (*)
			1980	1990	2000	H: GH-1 * TA: 1	H: 2–3 * TA: 2	H: 5 * TA: 3
Dalt Vila	Hotels	5 (102)	1	2	2	2	2	1
	Apartments	2 (18)	0	2	0	1	0	1
	Holiday homes	2 (6)	-	-	-	-	-	-
La Penya	Hotels	1 (23)	0	0	1	1	0	0
	Apartments	1 (23)	1	0	0	1	0	0
	Holiday homes	1 (2)	-	-	-	-	-	-
La Marina	Hotels	3 (81)	0	3	0	3	0	0
	Apartments	1 (14)	0	0	1	1	0	0
	Holiday homes	0	-	-	-	-	-	-
Vara de Rei	Hotels	3 (75)	0	2	1	3	0	0
	Apartments	0 (0)	0	0	0	0	0	0
	Holiday homes	0	-	-	-	-	-	-
Historic centre	Hotels	12 (281)	1	7	4	9	2	1
	Apartments	4 (55)	1	2	1	3	0	1
	Holiday homes	3 (8)	-	-	-	-	-	-

(*) H: hotel; TA: tourist apartment; GH: guesthouse.

) (Figure 5).

If we look at the number of tourist beds in hotels and apartments, again the pressure of hotels in the old city was low. The biggest hotel, in La Marina, had 46 beds. Despite this area’s heritage value, the hotels and tourist apartments were concentrated along the southwest coast (Platja d’en Bossa-Figueretes) and, to a lesser extent, in the northeast (the waterfront promenade and Talamanca). In this last sector, with fewer hotels, they were smaller and higher in category (Figure 6).

Finally, there was no clear pattern to the 43 holiday homes (VTV and ETV), and they were distributed across most of the municipality, including well-established parts of the city and less-developed, rural areas. In the area under analysis in this study, there were just three holiday homes (8 beds), with two in Dalt Vila and one in La Penya (Figure 7). This is a very low number when compared with the number of homes advertised on tourism rental platforms. According to data from Airdna (https://www.airdna.co/; accessed on 10 May 2022), the market indicator provider and world leader in holiday rental statistics, in the municipality of Ibiza, 851 holiday rentals were advertised in September 2021. Of these, a total of 69 were located in the historic centre: 36 in La Marina, 29 in Dalt Vila, 8 in Vara de Rei, and 6 in La Penya. A total of 88.41% were whole homes, with all the negative impacts that this implies for the conventional rental market. Although there are no specific studies for Ibiza, these impacts have been demonstrated in other cities, such as Palma in neighbouring Mallorca [5,60] and in Minorca [61]. These repercussions include a drop in the availability of conventional rental properties and, as a result, an increase in rental and real estate prices—factors that force local residents to search for housing elsewhere.

Hence, in the municipality as a whole, the historic centre accounted for 17.64% of all the hotels (2.89% beds), 8.51% of all the tourism apartments (2.38% beds), 6.98% of all the holiday homes (2.93% beds), and 8.11% of those advertised on platforms such as Airbnb and Vrbo.

On the island of pleasure, deluxe living, leisure, and partying (probably the Mediterranean’s most international island), hotels have shown no interest in Ibiza’s most emblematic historic area, located in part of a World Heritage Site. They are not the main reason for the historic centre’s aggressive gentrification or the direct cause of its high tourist pressure. Its heritage is not seen as a pull factor, but as something for sporadic consumption. We do not know whether this is because it is in an early stage, compared with other cities such as Palma, in terms of urban tourism or because there are other interests that fit in better with the specific features of this city, such as its function as a second home for tourists and its unofficial holiday rentals, or simply due to its museumized function and its role as a provider of complementary services for sun, sand, and clubbing tourism for all the resorts that surround it, both in the city and on the island as a whole.

Substantial scientific debate has been triggered on the relationship between different modes of tourism and the heritage found in World Heritage cities. In Asia, numerous authors have failed to find any relevant connection between them. For instance, in China, studies demonstrated that a World Heritage listing was more influential in protecting heritage than in using it to boost tourism [62]. The empirical results of Macao showed that a World Heritage listing had no significant impact on promoting tourism other than a possible short-run, tourism-enhancing impact [63]. This contrasts with cities in western Europe, which use the World Heritage seal mainly for promotional purposes and to promote tourism [64], as well as Mexican ones, where the gentrification of World Heritage cities is so strongly promoted that the popular classes are excluded from them [27], suggesting that national neoliberal agendas seek tourism-driven development by treating urban heritage resources as commodities [65]. In all these cases, the reuse of a city’s built heritage is one of the main linchpins in tourism gentrification.

Outlying tourist areas share more in common with our case study, particularly Caribbean ones, since most Caribbean World Heritage cities are on islands dedicated to sun and sand tourism, as in the case of Ibiza. Havana (Cuba) and the Colonial City of Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic) are two of the most paradigmatic, widely analysed cases. Although tourism gentrification has been studied in Havana [66,67,68,69,70,71,72,73], Cuba’s political regime has hindered comparisons with other cities. In the case of the capital of the Dominican Republic, although its historic centre’s renovation with funds from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) (initially through the 2004 Strategic Plan and the 2006 Regulatory Plan for its Integral Revitalization, and then through the 2016 Integrated Tourism and Urban Development Plan for the Colonial City of Santo Domingo) has played a fundamental role in drawing attention to the value of its heritage, the renovation process has also led to a high degree of gentrification [14,74]. Initially, much like Ibiza, the Colonial City was a complementary tourist attraction for day-trippers from leading tourist resorts such as Bávaro, Punta Cana, and La Romana. Today, the old city has boosted its hotel supply with small boutique hotels, and the Colonial City has become a leading destination in itself. In this last point, it differs from Ibiza, where most hotels are still concentrated in coastal tourist resorts in the municipality at varying distances from more consolidated parts of the city or in other areas of the island. Both places do, nonetheless, have some notable common denominators in terms of changes in their social makeup. From an analysis of data relating to different plans for the city’s urban revitalization, in the Colonial City of Santo Domingo, in a context in which there was a drop in its population (2010–2015: −8.58%), the number of foreign tourists grew (2010–2019: 58%), the number of residents born outside the historic centre grew (28% have lived there for fewer than 5 years), and there was even an increase in the number of unoccupied homes (2010: 20.11%; 2015: 23%). These seem to be worldwide processes, although some aspects of our case study set it apart in terms of the size of the city and its island location, where it can act as a metropolitan area of the island capital from the perspectives of tourism and heritage consumption.

5. Conclusions

Gentrification, tourism, and heritage are elements of a key equation in understanding the challenges faced by the touristified historic centres of small- and medium-sized cities such as Ibiza.

Ibiza is a leading world capital for sun and sand tourism and for nightlife, with such big economic potential that it has even managed to create an internationally famous music and fashion industry. The image of Ibiza that is conveyed to the outside world, thus, tends to be based on a cliché, with little in common with the image of a historic city. Although there is a genuine Ibiza, its associations with leisure invade all areas of the island.

As a complement to the numerous scientific studies that have analysed the impacts of tourism in historic centres, in this paper, we demonstrated that the city of Ibiza’s high level of touristification could not just be measured by the numbers of hotels and hotel beds, but also by the intensive use of its heritage resources to the point that the whole of the city’s historical and monumental ensemble has become a complementary tourism attraction for a leading sun and sand destination that has spread beyond Ibiza’s urban areas to encompass the whole island. In Ibiza’s case, not only do people confuse the island with the city in their minds, but this also extended to tourism’s use of the territory.

This research study does have certain limitations, particularly in terms of the lack of statistics at an inter-urban level. Due to an absence of data, we were hindered in relating income levels to the nationality of the foreign resident population, in identifying the origins of tourists who visit Dalt Vila and their type of consumption of its heritage, and in identifying processes of social substitution, as well as where residents go when they are forced out of the historic centre.

Ibiza’s historic centre is not the island’s key tourist attraction, but it is exposed to a high degree of tourism consumption, with big social and urban consequences. The historic city’s outstanding heritage is under threat, not from the perspective of its conservation or pressure from hotels since, unlike Mallorca, the hotel sector has not yet shown much interest in opening hotels there, but due to pressure from neighbouring tourist resorts and to the negative socio-urban effects of gentrification.

In Ibiza, many people play an active role in gentrification, and many others benefit passively from it. Even so, a clear majority of the population consciously or unconsciously suffers from its effects, from the general rising cost of living, the threat of a lost home, or eviction to problems in purchasing or renting a home at a decent price, excluding the most vulnerable from enjoyment of the city.

From a social point of view, the historic centre is undergoing a drop in its registered population and an increase in residents born outside the island, with a predominance of foreigners from the global north. In economic terms, the city’s museumization has no connection with the influx of high-category hotels to this part of the city. Dalt Vila’s function as a complementary tourism attraction is currently protecting it from an inrush of hotel investment capital. Dalt Vila and the other old quarters beside it provide complementary tourism services, and they act as a museumized space for the city’s sun and sand resorts (with more gentrified resorts in the north and others devoted to mass tourism in the south) and, in general, for those of the whole island. However, given the situations of other historic centres, including Palma (in neighbouring Mallorca) and other, more distant ones on the peripheries of tourism (the Colonial City of Santo Domingo), a change in this trend can be speculated on.

From a tourism and cultural perspective, Ibiza’s rich heritage is widely recognized and much-admired, although it is not sufficiently powerful in itself to attract tourists. Ibiza is a sun, sand, and clubbing destination, where the (natural and cultural) landscape and its Mediterranean essence are both ingredients in its success. It would be interesting to incorporate the concept of sustainable heritage tourism and two key principles of sustainable practices: a planning process that is long-term and holistic, as well as multiple stakeholder participation in that planning process [75].

This paper draws attention to a key issue for any area under high pressure from tourism: successful heritage promotion can lead to a social fiasco. In this complex situation beset by contradictions, two fundamental factors to take into account are how to control the negative impacts of tourism and gentrification. Ibiza is a tourism monoculture and an island dependent on external forces. It never even underwent an industrial revolution, passing from an agricultural economy to a service-sector one and from a traditional scattered population to scattered post-Fordist tourist settlements. At the same time, public policies for the protection of its heritage coexist with others focused on its promotion, and numerous local laws for the protection of the region clash with other equally important legislation on the promotion of tourism. Although further research is needed and comparisons must be made with other small islands in outlying tourist areas, at a socio-urban level, the island of Ibiza can be interpreted as a metropolitan space where Dalt Vila acts as the historic centre of the island, as opposed to that of the capital. Only from this perspective can we understand many of its social, urban, and functional variables.