TTH first reported on this event in July, when Sant Antoni's plan to hand s'Arenal beach over to a private eclipse party for the day drew warnings from a local environmental group and concern over nesting Balearic shearwaters. That was the fight over whether the party should happen at all. Now that it has happened, the story is about what the town did with the condition it was given, and who gets blamed for ignoring it.

What did Costas actually require?

Spain's coastal authority, Costas, has jurisdiction over what happens on public shoreline, and it greenlit the eclipse event at s'Arenal under one explicit condition: free and public access to the whole public domain, meaning nobody could be charged to reach or use the beach. The promoter, Feels Like Eclipse Festival, run by a company called The Soul Community, sold tickets starting at 45 euros for August 12 anyway, the day of the total solar eclipse. Costas had in fact denied the permit outright on August 7, five days earlier. The party went ahead regardless.

Who's actually taking responsibility?

Nobody, so far. Sant Antoni's mayor, Marcos Serra of the ruling Partido Popular, put it entirely on the promoter: "los que tenían que mantener lo que habían acordado y no cobrar la entrada", the ones who had to keep to what was agreed and not charge admission. PSOE councilor Xavier Rey pushed back, arguing the town hall's own process was the problem: "Autorizaban la fiesta de una forma irregular... Se tienen que depurar responsabilidades técnicas y políticas", the party was authorized irregularly and technical and political responsibilities need to be established.

"Se tienen que depurar responsabilidades técnicas y políticas.", Xavier Rey, PSOE councilor, Sant Antoni

The paperwork confirming the violation only reached Sant Antoni's municipal council today, more than two weeks after the party happened, which is what's forcing this argument into the open now.

How thin was the actual enforcement?

Thirty local police officers were reportedly promised on site to manage the event. Two showed up. That gap between what was written down and what happened on the sand is the real story: a permit condition only holds if somebody checks it, and on August 12 nobody did. Noudiari also flagged a separate, Egyptian-themed private party on the island the next day, August 13, that burned through 170 tons of water during an active drought alert, cited by critics as the same pattern repeating: private money buys access to public land and scarce resources, on the assumption nobody will ever have to answer for it.

Why it matters

For an island whose late-summer economy runs on exactly this kind of high-ticket beach spectacle, a permit condition that evaporates the moment ticket money changes hands tells every other promoter watching that Costas' sign-off is negotiable in practice, as long as the party happens before anyone reads the fine print.

What we think

This isn't really about 45 euros. It's about the gap between what Ibiza's authorities put on paper and what they actually send anyone to enforce. Two officers for an event that was supposed to have thirty is not an oversight, it's a decision, and a mayor blaming the promoter for breaking a rule the town itself barely policed is not accountability, it's damage control.