Hippie Island: The curious story of Ibiza

An exhibition being held in Malmö, Sweden will be coming to an end this weekend. It is an exhibition devoted to hippies of the Soviet era, entitled "The Psychedelic Underground of 1970s Estonia". The exhibition considers how the hippie movement in Estonia took shape and was able to survive, despite attempts to subvert it by a Soviet regime which viewed it as a genuine political threat.

It seems remarkable that a counter-culture movement based on peace, love, freedom and free-thinking could even have existed in the Soviet Union, but somehow it was able to establish itself, and in Estonia there were ingredients that made it more likely to catch on there than in other parts of the old USSR. Estonia is close to Nordic countries with which it has long had much in common, especially with Finland, as the Estonian language comes from the same Uralic family as Finnish. Since gaining independence, Estonia has moved pretty easily towards a Nordic liberal model, reflecting perhaps an inherent attitude among Estonians that had remained beneath the surface during Soviet times. It was also on the periphery of the Soviet Union, though that didn't mean it was wholly disregarded; its position on the Baltic was, after all, pretty strategic for a paranoid Soviet military and government.

But its location may, nevertheless, be important in understanding how a hippie movement could have sprung up, because there is a certain similarity, in terms of remoteness, to how hippie culture caught hold in Franco's Spain; this was not a culture of mainland Spain but of Ibiza.

It is one of the oddities of the 1960s and 1970s that hippies became associated with islands that were controlled by two fascist regimes. Ibiza was one, the other was the south side of Crete. The hippy trail that didn't venture beyond Europe had two end points; the shorter route was to Ibiza, the longer one was to Crete. The similarity between the two islands was their relative isolation. Franco could effectively ignore the hippies in Ibiza, as the Greek colonels could ignore those in Crete. So long as they caused no trouble, and they never did, then they were left alone.

Ibiza, though, became the epicentre of Spanish and European hippydom. It was cut off from the mainland but it was also a lot easier to get to than to Crete. Because it (and Formentera for that matter) was less developed for tourism than Mallorca (and possibly Menorca), Ibiza had more going for it as the magnet to attract Spain's and Europe's hippies.

It is a matter of interest, though, why hippies would have descended on an island under fascist rule and why, despite the remoteness of the Balearics, they were able to in such great numbers. Free-thinking, free-loving hippies were, as in Estonia, the total antithesis of an authoritarian state which, in Spain's case, was dominated by the straightjacket of Falangist intellectual dogma and strict Catholicism. But it is perhaps an example of how contrary the Franco regime could be, when it suited. Hippies they may have been, but they were still tourists - sort of - and they did add to the local economy.

Seemingly, the greatest concerns that the hippies had involved the Guardia Civil nabbing them when they were cavorting about kit-off. Otherwise, and as a report from the "Majorca Daily Bulletin" of 4 July 1970 revealed, hippies ran up against the forces of the law only when they were being asked to get washed. The report says that hippies were "invited" to wash and clean themselves up for a hippie wedding that was taking place on Ibiza.

It would appear, and this is an additional curiosity, that just prior to Franco's death and immediately afterwards hippies were abandoning Ibiza. It has been suggested that this was to do with external events, such as the end of the Vietnam War, and that the hippie movement had simply run out of steam. But even if there was an exodus then, Ibiza didn't lose its hippie culture or anything like it. What happened was that, in part, it metamorphosised, and music had much to do with this. In 1973, there was a notable arrival on Ibiza. José Padilla. He was to eventually become identified with the Café del Mar and ambient music, which, together with trance and rave, were to no small extent the offspring of psychedelia. The Ibiza clubs, and Pacha and Amnesia both opened in 1973, have of course become the stuff of legend.

The Ibiza hippie culture lives on. And as such, it is a fascinating example of how an imported social movement came to mould an island's very being. In Estonia, I'll bet they wished that they had had better weather.