Consequently, most islanders lived pretty secluded lives – until the Fifties, when the first cars first arrived. You can still find their homes everywhere: rustic, honey-coloured stone farmhouses topped with exposed wooden beams. Secreted beside forests, or within olive and almond groves, they rise out of the dry, red earth: simple, robust, self-sufficient and cool beneath the infernal Ballearic sun.
Of course, Ibiza has since experienced a different kind of invasion and many of these original structures have been converted into stylish rural hotels and private villas. Staying in them is one of the White Isle’s quiet joys. The hotels tend to appropriate from the Italian, calling themselves “agroturismos”; but the Spanish word “finca” has stayed in use for the more intimate private residences.