Eivissa ([əjˈvisə] in Catalan) is located 277 km from Barcelona and 150 km from the city of València.

Eivissa Town is a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1999, mainly due to the well-preserved Renaissance walls of the old town and the Punic necropolis of Puig des Molins (Windmills’ Hill), considered the most important funerary ensemble in the Western Mediterranean, covering 5 ha and containing near 3,000 Carthaginian hypogea or underground tombs.

Eivissa Town was founded in 654 BC by Phoenician settlers. Later the island came under control of Carthage, the Roman Empire, the Moors, and was finally incorporated into the Aragon Kingdom in 1235, becoming a Catalan-speaking island.

It is around five decades since the hippies first laid foot in Eivissa, and also artists, writers and Vietnam draft-dodgers. They laid the foundations for the island to grow into one of the world’s biggest clubbing destinations.

Eivissa is not only famous for its landscape and traditional architecture (and gastronomy), but also for a vivid artistic and intellectual life that dates back to the 30s, when intellectuals and artists from all over Europe found refuge in the island fleeing from Nazism (Erwin Broner, Will Faber, Raoul Hausmann, Erwin von Kreibig, Wolfgang Schulze). After the Spanish Civil War, Eivissa’s avant garde artistic life crystallized in the creation of the Grupo 59 (Erwin Bechtold, Erwin Broner, Hans Laabs, Katya Meirowsky, Heinz Trökes, Bob Mumford, Egon Neubauer, Bertil Sjöberg i Antonio Ruiz). In the sixties, a renowned group of local artists created the Grup Puget, formed by the artists Antoni Marí “Portmany”, Vicent Ferrer, Antoni Pomar and Vicent Calbet.

During the fascist dictatorship of Franco, which lasted about 40 years, Catalan language and culture were repressed. In the early seventies, Eivissan society started reclaiming their own national identity. The Institut d’Estudis Eivissencs published in 1972 Curs d’iniciació a la llengua by Marià Villangómez (1913-2002), eminent poet and translator. This grammar book guided the first Catalan teaching initiatives in the island. To this day, the Institut d’Estudis Eivissencs has been the responsible for boosting Catalan culture on the island.

Eivissan Catalan has raised interest among traditional philologists and linguists. By the time in which dialectology was largely done in the form of atlases, the work on the local dialect by Antoni Maria Alcover merits consideration (1921-1922, 1921, 1923). Later on, it is worth mentioning the investigations on Eivissan Catalan by philologists Aina Moll (1957), Marià Torres (1980, 1983, 1993) and Joan Veny (1999), and Marià Villangómez (1957, 1972, 1974).

You can read more about today’s Eivissa on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibiza.

References:

  • Alcover, Antoni M. 1921-1922. Els Eyvissencs. Bolletí del Diccionari de la Llengua Catalana 12: 49-65.
  • Alcover, Antoni M. 1921. Una altra eixida a Eyvissa. Bolletí del Diccionari de la Llengua Catalana 12: 37-44.
  • Alcover, Antoni M. 1923. Escapada filològica a Eyvissa. Bolletí del Diccionari de la Llengua Catalana 13: 27-35.
  • Moll, Aina. 1957. Sufijos nominales y adjetivales en ibicenco. Revista de Filología Española XLI (1-4): 341-371.
  • Torres, Marià. 1980. Aspectes sociolingüístics de la cançó popular i tradicional eivissenca. La vocal neutra. Bachelor thesis, Universitat de Barcelona.
  • Torres, Marià. 1983. Aspectes del vocalisme tònic eivissenc. Eivissa 14: 22-23.
  • Torres, Marià. 1993. La llengua catalana a Eivissa al segle XVII. “Reals Ordinacions de la Universitat d’Eivissa” (1663). Introducció, estudi lingüístic i transcripció. Eivissa: Editorial Mediterrània.
  • Veny, Joan. 1999. Aproximació al dialecte eivissenc. Palma: Moll.
  • Villangómez, Marià. 1957. Llibre d’Eivissa. Barcelona: Selecta.
  • Villangómez, Marià. 1972. Curs d’iniciació a la llengua: normes gramaticals, lectures eivissenques i formentereres. Eivissa: Institut d’Estudis Eivissencs.
  • Villangómez, Marià. 1974. Eivissa. La terra, la història, la gent. Barcelona: Selecta.

Terra natal

Arrelar, com un arbre, dins la terra:
no ser núvol endut d’un poc de vent.
Sobre els camps coneguts de cada dia,
veure un cel favorable i diferent.
Mirar com cau, quotidià, el crepuscle,
cada cop renovant-me el sentiment.
Damunt la terra nostra i estimada,
del cor neixen el pi, l’aire i l’ocell.
El blanc record de la infantesa hi sura, i
ha de fer bo, aquest sol, als ossos vells.
Vull escoltar-hi aquest parlar que arriba
de molt antic als llavis de la gent.
El meu amor, la ferma companyia,
vull somiar-hi, entre la mar i el vent.

Marià Villangómez, Elegies i paisatges (1933-1943)

Native land

To put down roots into the earth, like trees:
not like a cloud, to be driven by the breeze.
Above the well-known fields of everyday,
to gaze upon a kind and different sky.
Each day to watch, with dusk, how the light falls,
that brings my feelings every time renewal.
Upon our land, from our beloved earth,
out of the heart are born pine, air and bird.
Here floats the white memory of childhood,
and this sun must do ancient bones some good.
I want to listen to this speech that comes
to people’s lips from long and distant times.
My love, my sturdy company, I want
to dream of this, between the sea and the wind.

Translated by Anna Crowe