Ibiza's underground party scene has a landlady problem, and it just got uglier. Casa Paola, the villa police dissolved twice in one night this July for running an unlicensed party, sits on land tied to Paquita Marsan, a property owner with a criminal record for tax fraud and an open file of fines for illegal construction. Time To House covered the raids and her ignored demolition order last month. What's surfaced since is worse: the same landlady is housing her migrant hospitality staff in tents while the local council signs off on her next tourism development.
What did Sant Josep just approve?
In September 2025, Sant Josep council reclassified a 13,400 square metre plot near Port des Torrent, owned by Marsan, to allow roughly 20 tourist apartments to be built on it. The approval came through the ordinary planning process, with no public reckoning over who was already living on that same land or how its owner made her money.
Who's actually living on this land?
Migrant hospitality workers from Western Sahara and Senegal, the people who staff Ibiza's bars, kitchens and villas through the season, live on the plot in tents and shelters improvised from wooden pallets and tarpaulin. They are not squatters passing through: they are the labour the island's tourism economy depends on every summer, housed by the same landowner who is about to profit from a fresh round of tourist construction on the ground beneath them.
How does this connect to Casa Paola?
Marsan is directly linked to Casa Paola, the villa Ibiza police shut down twice in 24 hours this July over an unlicensed party, and which has since ignored its demolition order. She has already served close to a year in prison over 867,469 euros in tax fraud, and continues to rack up fines for illegal construction and labour violations. Sant Josep's mayor, Vicent Roig, didn't hold back when asked about her properties.
"Es un no parar." ("It never stops."), Vicent Roig, mayor of Sant Josep
The promoter behind the Casa Paola party, fined after the raid, complained publicly about the cost of doing business on the island: "Nos gastamos muchísimo dinero en esta 'fucking island' y ¿así nos lo agradecen?" ("We spend so much money on this 'fucking island' and this is how they thank us?") It's a tone-deaf line from the party's promoter that lands very differently next to workers sleeping under tarps on the landlady's own ground.
Why it does this matter for house's underground?
Casa Paola isn't a footnote in Ibiza's rave economy, it's a symptom. The same illegal-party infrastructure that fuels the island's underground scene runs on landowners who treat fines as a line item and labour as disposable. Approving more tourist flats on this specific plot, without addressing who's living there now, tells you exactly whose interests the permitting process protects.
