When Ricardo Urgell first opened the nightclub Pacha in Catalonia in the late 1960s, he took its name from a comment his first wife made: she told him that with the money he was going to earn, he would live like a pachá, an Arabian prince. By 1973, he had opened Pacha Ibiza, now the Balearic island’s most legendary after-dark hotspot. The sentiment of the name held: those paying a visit to Pacha’s dancefloor over the decades went in search of the good life—united by a love of hedonism, glamour, and spiritual escape through music.
Still, back in the ’70s, the home of Pacha—Ses Feixes, facing Ibiza Town from across the port—was mostly farmland, and Pacha itself looked very different from the “superclub” many know today. Designed by Urgell to look like a classic finca—an Ibizan farmhouse with white dry stone and mortar walls and wooden interiors—the building was fairly unassuming.
But a sense of freedom filled the air, explains Francisco Ferrer, a born and bred Ibizan who has worked at Pacha for decades. The relative isolation meant that the club could be open air and music could play until sunrise. There was a swimming pool, and guests would strip off and jump in. “It was another time, before smartphones—people weren’t thinking about selfies,” Ferrer adds.
Ibiza had still yet to become known as a clubbing capital, but it was considered a bohemian haven. In the late 1970s, Bob Marley visited; earlier in the decade, Joni Mitchell composed her album Blue there. The island also drew draft evaders from the Vietnam War, and pacifists escaping the Franco dictatorship. At Pacha, the florals, silk shirts, and flares that defined the decade were shed to reveal shell necklaces, crochet swimsuits, or just gold body glitter. Following Pacha’s lead, other clubs began to open, including Glory’s and Es Paradis, which would pave the way for the island’s boom period in the ’80s, defined by its extravagance—think professional dancers in the club, and visitors like Grace Jones.
“It was 1986 when I first came to the island,” remembers Simon Dunmore, founder of Defected Records. “[British DJ and producer] Nicky Holloway had a list of like-minded clubbers—about 200 people. We met in San Antonio, and Nicky would go to local bars and ask if we could play records. We were dancing to rare groove and hip-hop in places like Cafe Del Mar. We’d watch the sunset then go out clubbing all night.”
Legendary DJ Pete Tong, who currently sits on Pacha’s executive board, first visited around the same time—the era that DJs Paul Oakenfold, Johnny Walker, Danny Rampling, and Holloway also took the famous trip to Ibiza that is credited with birthing rave culture. They discovered the club Amnesia, ecstasy was everywhere, and it wouldn’t have been uncommon to see people making love on the dancefloor in garish neons and baggy jeans.
The ripple effect of the Ibiza club scene was huge; Oakenfold, Walker, Rampling, and Holloway brought the island’s blend of Chicago House and Balearic music back home to Britain with them, while visitors flocked from Europe to feel the freedom. “Pacha was always there,” says Tong, but during this period it began to “fade into the background slightly” especially “in comparison to edgier and more ravey clubs like Manumission and Space.”
The millennium marked Pacha’s revival period, however: Eric Murillo joined the lineup, and Paul Oakenfold had a night, which Tong then took over with Pure Pacha, a residency that lasted ten years. “Pacha had almost been the most glamorous, the most Spanish, the most Latin,” he says. “International, classy. You had the legacy of Hollywood glamour and Spanish royalty coming over in the ’70s and ’80s. I wanted to bring back the heritage, the feeling of dressing up, the spirit of what Pacha had been at the beginning.”
By the 2010s, Pacha had moved more into the EDM space and became a franchise, with clubs opening in New York, London, and several other cities. “It got messy,” Jessica McCarthy Capaz, artistic director of Pacha, remembers. “It’s not just about the cherry logo, it’s about content, operations, service. Some of the new Pacha clubs did a good job, Buenos Aires was amazing, for example, others less so.” By 2017, new ownership decided to close the franchises. Capaz herself wanted to take Pacha in another direction, to leave behind the EDM big room sound and “go back to basics, what Pacha was famous for—house music—and Solomon, Dixon, and Bob Sinclair brought back those more organic, warm, sexy sounds.”
This June marks the fiftieth anniversary of the club—and five decades of defining both club culture and style. At the 2023 opening party, the room hits capacity as Solomon headlines from the new DJ booth, installed to update the space and to swap a raised pulpit above the dancefloor to a booth into the center of the club, and the middle of the crowd and action. The VIP area is sprawling, with burly waiters in black T-shirts carrying champagne bottles with sparklers, and emblazoned with the club’s famous logo. Tickets aren’t cheap, but as Ferrer points out, DJs have put their prices up; plus, there’s the new sound system and its complex but impressive architectural design above the dancefloor. In VIP, you’re paying for that “Mediterranean sense of hospitality,” he adds, and true to form, on opening night, he seems to know everyone.
The club is so busy, the atmosphere feels both chaotic and exhilarating—outside of the VIP area, a place to sit is hard to come by—but most visitors are more concerned with dancing until the club closes at 7 a.m. Drugs and sex are absent (or at least, not visible) and the hippy attire of yesteryear has had an update: the women wear short, tight dresses, men more laidback in Gucci and Palace, or linen shirts and Armani for the more mature crowd. As well as the nooks, crannies, smoking area, and terrace filled with roaming clubbers, there’s also a restaurant on-site for those seeking a more formal experience, or for the older Pacha clientele who want to soak up the atmosphere from a distance. Ferrier explains over the pumping music that he once met three generations of the same family in the club.
The season will run from May until October, with the usual roster of rotating nights; from “Flower Power”, paying homage to the club’s hippy history, to a “psychedelic burning man,” to a masquerade. (Think Eyes Wide Shut in a club setting.) “Every night is different,” says Capaz, “people don’t go to the same club two nights in a row, so we have different nights to attract different crowds, to make it accessible to everyone.”
In line with this philosophy, Pacha’s focus for the future is on expanding. Lío—a dining and cabaret experience that has been entertaining guests for over a decade in Ibiza—is set to be rolled out around the world, while the glitz of the main roster of clubs will soon be offset with Pachacha in Formentera, a cozy 400-capacity space that invites local DJs to play vinyl. Pacha’s open-air parties at their Ibiza venues 528 and Destino, meanwhile, cater to a generation of clubbers who are interested in day parties, so they can get to bed early and balance clubbing with the growing desire for a wellness experience.
“People have always come to Ibiza for that spiritual experience,” concludes Dunmore. “There’s the part in the north [of the island], which we associate with wellbeing and yoga retreats, and then the south, the community element where people plan their holidays around meeting people and having a shared experience at the clubs. That balance has always resonated with me. Maybe that explains why I’ve gone back every year since 1986.”
Beyond this sense of balance, Dunmore puts Ibiza’s appeal down to the offering of escape—one that still feels as relevant now as it did when the club first opened half a century ago. “Back in the day, it was a place for people who felt like they needed to get away from being repressed—where creatives and fashion and party people used to go in the summers and dance to Alfredo at open-air clubs,” he says. “They were incredibly vibrant times. The island has changed, sure, but it still has that spiritual element. That magnetism.”