‘Our club is the only place in the port that is left for Ibicencos,’ says Vicent Canals, director of the Club Náutico de Ibiza. ‘Ibiza is whoring itself out and we cannot continue like this.’ A call to arms indeed as the insidious tentacles of commercialisation encroach. This benign institution has been at the heart of Ibiza’s sailing community for almost 200 years. Its future is now entirely uncertain in the face of plans to ‘upgrade’ the facilities as befits an international luxury marina. Is it too much to ask that it be left alone and not turned into a faceless upmarket eatery like the rest of the marina? Where will the fishermen with their llaüts go then? Where will their subsidised bullit de peix come from? Where will they celebrate christenings and birthdays with their kinsmen? When will people grasp the folly of buying up paradise only to shape it in their own world view? It is nothing but contemporary colonialism and it is at best short sighted and at worst unforgivable. LEAVE IBIZA’S PAST ALONE. Leave the Club Náutico alone. Leave the tiny bars and the basic restaurants and the estancos and the colmados alone. Leave the bar-top displays of tapas and the tough payés bread and the menus del día. They belong to the Ibicencos, whose history, heritage and honour is why we’re all here in the first place. These places and these things may not be to your taste, but unless you grew up in Ibiza they do not need your vision nor your progress nor your improvements. They are not part of YOUR heritage. It is all well and good regenerating the land and saving the posidonia and protecting the lizards, but HUMAN history is what built this island and woe betide the day it is all lost to commercial greed. Shame on you whoever supports a change of use at Club Náutico. Shame on you. @clubnauticoibiza @diario_de_ibiza @ibizapreservation