Tourism Workers and Entrepreneurs during the 1950s and 1960s in Sant Antoni de Portmany (Ibiza, Spain)

Abstract

[Abstract] Ibiza is very dependent on the tourism sector and is a highly recognized international brand. However, before the tourist boom, the situation was different, since it was an economically underdeveloped and almost unknown island. In the 1950s, an eminently endogenous tourism development began thanks to local entrepreneurship, usually workers and modest traders who dared to invest in the new sector. The development was not homogeneous throughout the island, with Sant Antoni de Portmany being the pioneer town in the post-Spanish Civil War recovery (1939–1959), the example from which the rest of the island learned and the starting point of the current image of Ibiza. This article seeks to delve into the social context of Sant Antoni in its tourist beginnings, especially in the mentality and way of being of the workers and businessmen of that time. It is an economic history paper that analyzes bibliography and testimonies of that time to provide a vision of what society, tourism and pioneering entrepreneurs were like. The peculiarities of the society, workers and entrepreneurs from the beginnings of the tourism sector have generated many of the positive and negative elements of current society and tourism in Ibiza, highlighting the survival of a mentality, way of doing and vital approach based on networking, irregularities and improvisation.