Monthly Archives: July 2020

The sun-kissed party isle of Ibiza has reopened to tourists with new rules in place that could signal an end to the Balearic islands hedonistic holidays.

Travel to Spain is once again on the cards after the country lifted its state of emergency and opened its borders to Schengen-zone and EU countries. Visitors heading its third-largest, yet arguably most famous, Balearic island will discover that many of the partying ways of pre-pandemic holidays in Ibiza are no more.

Tourism authorities that govern the islands have introduced a slew of measures designed to ensure public safety during the Covid-19 pandemic.

These include restrictions on opening times for bars in busy areas, the closure of the islands biggest nightclubs and a freeze on new licenses for party boats.

Indoor clubs with capacities of fewer than 300 can reopen, but at reduced capacity and clubbers must be seated signalling an end to the island's quintessential thriving dance floors. For a place that's built its reputation on foam parties, unabashed hedonism and the world's best nightclubs, these are no trivial matters.

The Balearic government has also put an end to crowded beaches across the region with every sunbather on shorelines in Mallorca, Menorca, Ibiza and Formentera dictated to have at least four square metres of space.

Groups of more than 25 people are also prohibited on the beach, a rule that looks set to curtail long-running soirees on the sand at places such as Blue Marlin and Nikki Beach. Local authorities on each island have also been given permission to add time limits to beach visits, if things start to get busy.

Further limitations include restrictions on opening times for bars and clubs in Ibiza's busiest spots such as San Antonio. This move signals that if not an end, it is atleast an early finish or change of pace to the merriment for which the island is famous.

Despite such comprehensive confines being mandated upon an island where clubbing is intrinsic to life, as the first tourists slowly begin to return to its sun-dipped shores, it is embracing a new sense of optimism.

The first tourists are here now nothing compared to a normal summer just yet, but friends living in Ibiza Town have said that finally the centre gets a little livelier in the evening, says Stivi Stivanello from Ibiza Spotlight a long-running local guide providing information and services for the island.

I've thought about that and I actually think it could be a chance for Ibiza Town and the port this summer, he adds.

The islands super clubs may have had their wings clipped for the season, but theyre not ready to retreat quietly.

Pacha Ibizas longest-running and most famous club will not open this summer for the first time in its 52-year history. Instead, the cherry-laced club in Talamanca has been organising virtual house parties where renowned DJs who would typically take to the club's hallowed decks are streaming sets via Zoom. Pete Tong, Bedouin and Erik Morillo are among the names to have hosted. Pacha is also proclaiming a huge comeback in 2021, stating: This wont kill our vibe, because the comeback is always stronger than the setback."

It won't be long until we can all unite under the Ibizan sun yet again

Cafe Del Mar

A statement from Amnesia, another of the islands top clubs that's famous for its foam parties and open-air clubbing concept, said: We dont know when will this all finish, but we do know one thing: the day this is all over, we'll celebrate it together."

Cafe Del Mar one of the most coveted party sunset locations on the island is also closed. Dating back to the 1980s, the chill-out bar celebrated 40 years of Ibizan vibes on June 20, but celebrations had to take place behind closed doors.

Today, as Cafe del Mar turns 40, we are unfortunately not able to open and celebrate this milestone with our friends from around the world. Instead, we ask you to play your favourite Ibiza sunset anthem and have a drink, not only for us but also for Ibiza, the most magical island on the planet. It won't be long until we can all unite under the Ibizan sun yet again, said the clubs social media page. Until then, daily sunsets are being streamed live on their Instagram page.

Tiffany Bennett, a Dubai content creator who is moving permanently to Ibiza as soon as travel restrictions allow, does not expect the new rules set by the tourism authorities to diminish any of the islands magic.

I honestly dont see it making that much difference, apart from cutting off the timeframe in which bars in the restricted areas can make money, says Bennett.

I know these rules have come into place for certain areas in the Balearics, but for example, on the West End of Ibiza youll simply be able to go a few streets across to a bar which is outside the limits of the new ruling. I think it will simply persuade tourists to move on to other venues.

The restrictions to party boats is only for the new licenses, and so everything thats already been running will carry on.

Travellers will find Ibiza less crowded this summer.

Crowds on the dance floor in Ibiza clubs will be a thing of the past. Getty Images

Ibiza is set to celebrate its softer side this summer.

Open-air eateries serving Ibizan cuisine are set to welcome travellers.

Ibiza is home to some of the world's best sunsets.

The magic of the White Island remains despite coronavirus restrictions. Unsplash

Social distancing will be in place at Ibiza hotels as they reopen. Courtesy Melia

The old days of Ibiza foam parties and all-night clubbing are no more.

Nobu Hotel Ibiza Bay is reopening after being closed due to coronavirus restrictions on the island. Courtesy Nobu Hospitality

This summer could be a chance for Ibiza's Old Town to shine. Getty Images

Ibiza nay, the Balearics have been quietly confident in containing the spread of the coronavirus. The eastern Spanish archipelago has recorded 2,179 confirmed cases of Covid-19 since the onset of the virus. Currently, there are 141 active cases, only 12 of which are in Ibiza.

Airlines have been quick to notice the region's success in managing the virus, and seem to be banking on the islands remaining popular with travellers. Several, including KLM, Ryanair, Turkish Airlines, easyJet and Iberia, have resumed flights to Ibiza or will do so in July.

We're going back to a time when life was more laid-back and our hotel guests and island characters gathered under the stars for magical Mediterranean evenings

Pikes Ibiza

Tourists venturing to the island this summer should expect to find much of the original spirit of Ibiza intact. New health procedures are in place for all arriving passengers that include temperature scanning and medical declaration forms, but the previous two-week quarantine period has ended.

Across the island, some of the best-known hotels will stay closed for the season, but others are starting to reopen.

Ibiza Rocks is reopening this month and aims to offer a socially distanced al fresco clubbing experience. The rock & roll-themed Pikes Ibiza in the San Antonio hills is also reopening in July, with a focus on a bucolic Ibiza past, a time when life was more laid-back and our hotel guests and island characters gathered under the stars for magical Mediterranean evenings". Nobu Hotel Ibiza Bay will reopen on Friday, July 10, bringing travellers "hazy golden sunrises and long, lazy afternoons spent on daybeds by the beach".

According to Stivanello from Spotlight Ibiza, it might be a good time to grab a bargain stay as several well-known hotels are offering discounted rates".

With packed dance floors and all-night clubbing on hiatus, this year Ibiza is showcasing its softer side one that's synonymous with idyllic beaches, incredible nature, bohemian markets, peaceful retreats and a vibrant culture.

Below the waves, Ibiza offers scuba divers crystal clear waters and unique dive sites such as the sunken fish factory or Don Pedro shipwreck. On dry land, there is history to explore at Dalt Vila the best-preserved coastal fortress in the Mediterranean. And Ibizan gastronomy is a unique exploratory must-do. With clubbing off the cards due to the coronavirus, tourists on the White Isle this summer will be swapping Ibiza Uncovered, for Ibiza uncrowded.

Updated: July 2, 2020 04:08 PM

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Is this the end of the road for Ibizas party scene? New tourism rules force the island to call it a night for summer - The National

Pub? A great question. So concise, yet so evocative. A single word in itself more persuasive than any thesis. Pub? An irresistible proposition asked only when the answer is all but assured, or, at least, immediately rendering alternative commitments far less appealing. Pub? Nobody has heard the siren call for months, not since they were cruelly shuttered by the coronavirus. The pub became accessible only through fading memory, reduced to little more than an imagined Peter Kay routine. (Remember pubs?! What were all that about?)

My own commitment to pubs cant be questioned: at the height of lockdown, and in a fit of quarantine delirium, I embarked on a needlessly elaborate project to create a 3D replica of my beloved local (Skehans, south London), just to have a drink in virtual reality. Just to feel something. Just to remind myself pubs really happened, and that I didnt hallucinate them. The whole exercise only served to make me miss the real thing more. For weeks now, Ive been dreaming of waltzing through those doors, slapping my contactless down on the bar, and supping the most cathartic first sup of unremarkable draught lager in history. And now Boris Johnson is offering to make that a reality. Pub this Saturday? hes asking England.

It is incredibly galling then, to find myself with no option but to turn him down, for the simple fact that he is Boris Johnson and there is an active pandemic on.

In my post-lockdown pub fantasies, the Covid-19 situation is actually over. Any objective observation of the present suggests it isnt. The speeding up of lockdown relaxations apparently motivated by business secretary Alok Sharmas prediction of 3.5m job losses and abandonment of even talking about the R rate means public health is now considered secondary to the economy. Its a grimly efficient bit of politicking, allowing the state to forgo further financial support to the service industry by covering the wages of its workers, while grasping for a grubby poll boost for the reopening of our precious drinking holes, as though theyre doing us a favour.

Of course, the actual experience of visiting any pub observing the necessary safety precautions sounds entirely abnormal. One-way systems, reduced capacity, rigid time slots, partition screens, staff in PPE: it all seems to be in conflict with the point of a pub as a relaxing and communal social environment. With the unspoken possibility of death lingering over proceedings, youre effectively drinking in a fully licensed hospital waiting room. In pubs where these are all but abandoned for instance, in rooms of heavily inebriated punters youll need to develop an unwavering commitment to deluded optimism, in order to stave off falling into any a deep and debilitating paranoia with each sip of San Miguel, wondering if you should have just bought a couple of cans and sat in a park instead.

Tellingly, Johnson has declared it our patriotic duty to return to pubs. This quasi-conscription into buying jingoistic Jgerbombs for Britain is yet another extension of the Tories psychedelic and historically illiterate evocation of the blitz spirit. Here the virus becomes an ideologically motivated militarised combatant that we find ourselves at war with, intent on destroying the our way of life by forcing us into quarantine rather than, say, a highly transmissible virus with no discriminate aim whatsoever that Johnson has failed to suppress because of an austerity-depleted local sphere and overly centralised political system.

In this garbled understanding of the second world war, our enemy is defeated by our stoic refusal to let it win by altering our everyday lives in the way it seems to demand. Who do you think you are kidding, Mr -19? Were not staying in lockdown forever. The 4 July date for England appears to have been picked for similarly incoherent reasons, the significance of the date (when another country actually liberated itself from British rule) glossed over.

Embracing this return to the pub as a patriotic duty also needs to be resisted because it gives the government a get-out-of-jail-free card: transferring responsibility for controlling the virus from a mixture of the state and the public entirely on to the latter. If there are further serious outbreaks, ire will be directed at the careless hedonism of patrons, who were following wilfully ambiguous government guidelines and active encouragement to go for pints, for Queen and country.

If pubs start going under en masse, it will be the fault of those puritans who priggishly stayed home. The government knows full well that for those who have been missing their friends dearly, and who have been deprived of fun for months, cries to ignore official relaxation of rules to stay at home will sound like absurdly unfair moralistic scolding; while those with health concerns, particularly those who are immuno-compromised and their loved ones, will view pub-goers as grotesquely selfish.

Despite keeping abreast of as much coverage of the crisis as I can bear, Ive noticed Ive started developing a mild suspicion of myself as possibly being overly distrustful and crankish for ignoring various relaxations of lockdown while others in my social circle take full advantage. The more things get back to normal, even before they ought to, the more those trying to keep themselves as hermetically sealed as possible seem faintly ridiculous, and with them, their criticisms of the government, too. After a while, perhaps we will relent, one by one, tuning out the horror and joining the others in a blissful unreality where we pretend everythings fine.

Whats farcical is that this is the best-case scenario. Those like me have to hope that were overly cautious wrong, even and that the Conservatives grossly negligent series of Hail Mary gambles pay off, because theres no contingency otherwise. We need pubs, restaurants, theatre, cinemas and everywhere else to have enough custom from the get-go in order to survive, and for this to have as few consequences for the health of their workers and the public as possible. If not, the ramifications for public health, the economy, and the very existence of the pub are dire and the Tories expect us to believe we only have ourselves to blame.

Tristan Cross is a Welsh writer based in London

Originally posted here:

I love pubs so much I recreated mine in VR but I'm staying home on 4 July - The Guardian

Since the 2020 festival season has been wiped out by the pandemic, what about next years offering of rescheduled musical delights? Things dont get bigger than Glastonbury as it celebrates its belated 50th anniversary in 2021. The lineup is yet to be finalised, but if the 2020 offering of Diana Ross, Kendrick Lamar and Taylor Swift is anything to go by, expect more must-see sets than you can run to. 23-27 June 2021

Barcelonas premier sun-soaked music showcase celebrates its own belated 20th anniversary in 2021 with a typically varied lineup featuring headliners the Strokes, Tame Impala and Gorillaz, as well as FKA twigs , Iggy Pop and Young Thug. Come for the music, stay for the balmy all-nighters. 2-6 June 2021

A bucolic wonderland nestled in the rolling Brecon hills, Green Man has a very strong claim to be the most beautifully located festival in the UK. Known for its folk-leaning lineups and championing of Welsh talent, previous notable performances have included homecoming heroes the Super Furry Animals, energetic jazz quartet Sons of Kemet and PJ Harvey. 19-22 August 2021

Dont be alarmed by the J word in the name. Yes, there is ample jazz for the heads in this labyrinthine weekender in Rotterdam, historically including Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock, but there have also been crowd-pleasing sets ranging from throwback heroes Toto to soul auteur Janelle Mone and Ms Lauryn Hill. 9-11 July 2021

If you cant bear the thought of crawling back to a damp tent after many hours of drinking and dancing, then a day festival is your solution. Field Day has managed to retain its independent charm in the 13 years it has been running. Now located in the vast Drumsheds complex in Tottenham, north London, you can stay dry while listening to the likes of Bicep, the Black Madonna and Floating Points. 10 July 2021

UK jazz impresario Gilles Peterson put on the first edition of his British festival only last year and impressed with the mix of young upstarts, esteemed veterans and night-time hedonism in the cosy confines of the woods at Abbots Ripton, Cambridgeshire. Its boutique atmosphere makes it the ideal place to discover new talent. 19-22 August 2021

Perhaps social distancing has made you hunger for the sweaty chaos of an enormous moshpit? Look no further than Wireless, the corporate behemoth famed for its ability to snag exclusives from US hip-hop and R&B royalty such as Drake, Travis Scott and Jay-Z. One for the headliners and the superfans. 2-4 July 2021

Houghton is the passion project of Craig Richards resident of the London mega-club Fabric an art and music weekender featuring an emphasis on lengthy DJ sets. Houghton has had a rough run since it began in 2017, having to cancel at the last minute in 2019 owing to bad weather. Next year promises to be a triumphant return, with its 24-hour music licence not for the faint-hearted. 12-15 August 2021

If you want your festivals to be nourishing for the mind as well as the body, Jodrell Bank Observatorys Bluedot could be the ticket, combining talks on space exploration with comedy and suitably cerebral music. Next years headliner is Bjrk, who has designed a special audiovisual set for the setting. 22-25 July 2021

The essence of East Sussexs tiny non-profit Brainchild festival is community. Attendees are encouraged to take part in workshops and maybe even jam with the bands. The music is all about discovery, too: jazz group Ezra Collective, rapper Kojey Radical and sax star Nubya Garcia played some of their earliest shows here. 9-11 July 2021

The rest is here:

From Glastonbury to Bluedot: 10 of the best festivals for summer 2021 - The Guardian