the automatic have just played a great set - someone decided to throw a toilet roll from their balcony in response to the football being tossed around - cue loads of bog roll from everywhere

A friend, Nick, went to the after hours protest in Ibiza town yesterday evening and sent us this short account:

Basically, about 8pm an assorted ragbag of hardcore (ie ageing ;-}) clubbers, queens and hippies headed off from Vara de Rey chanting “Libertad”. (It took some time for a chant which could be agreed on to emerge.)

The crowd then traipsed round sitting down at various road junctions accompanied by the honking of car horns. This may have been seen as support although it was rush hour… The demo was also joined by a car with a stereo only slightly less powerful than Amnesia’s. This gave everybody an excuse to jump around and perhaps provide justification for the authorities’ actions.

The local police made a half-hearted attempt to clear people from the road. But the Guardia Civil didn’t show, at least while I was there. And that was it really.

According to this mornings Diario de Ibiza - there were roughly a maximum of 300 people…

It’s the opening party of We Love at Space today - and for the first time the doors will be opening at 4.30pm instead of 8am. Will this affect the We Love party? We think not! With an opening line-up that includes 2manyDJs, Smokin’ Jo, Paul Woolford, Tom Novy and Jason Bye we are expecting a super-charged opening fiesta to kick off We Love’s 10^th anniversary celebrations this year.

We’ll let you know how it was tomorrow and you can listen for yourself on the We Love Podcast, online every Tuesday at www.welove-music.com. The opening fiesta show includes interviews with We Love and Mambo resident, Jason Bye, Jem Haynes of Chew the Fat! and with ultimate mash-up duo 2manyDJs - not to be missed.

-Ruth Osborn

Question: Does summer in Ibiza mean the end of the world as we know it?

Having just completed my first winter on the island I am jittery with pre-season nerves. I’m anxious that Opening Weekend signals the end of civilised winter and the beginning of a summer fraught with hordes of hard-drinking, creatively sunburnt tourists charging around the island on dodgy mopeds. Is there really a great divide between “us” and “them” though? Or is it possible the invaders are more finely attuned to the tempo of island life than I’m prepared to give credit for?

Exhibit A: the Space queue at half-past one. Personally, I’m only here to see my friend Dan Tait play the Flight Club Arena. The line is crammed with season pass holders, and moving slowly, so there is plenty of time to ascertain the majority language is Spanish. An hour or so of idle eavesdropping finally takes us into the main arena, where — again — the crowd is overwhelmingly Latin.

Later in the afternoon we sneak off to get some lunch and bump into a couple of British friends who have just been turned away from Space for certain, er, indiscretions. Perhaps the superior ability of the locals to blend in and avoid unwanted attention from the Guardia explains why they’re more visibly out enjoying themselves.

Exhibit B: DC10. Thanks to the new opening hours law I expect my favourite grimy disco to be jam-packed by the time I arrive at 2PM. It isn’t.

My friends and I waltz in to the mostly empty car park and one of the first people I spot a friend from San An and his (Ibicenco) posse. Of course DC10 is the spiritual home of the island’s massive Italian contingent but so many of them have been around for so long they practically count as natives. More to the point, the club fills in the gradual, amiable fashion of a local watering hole: by 4PM the terrace is comfortably full of people chatting and dancing, by 7PM packed, by 10PM in the grip of a secular revival meeting with much raising of hands and voices.

Exhibit C: The aftermath. Despite horror prognostications about wild after-parties and roaming herds of bellowing Brits all is calm as we drift woozily out of DC10 at 12.30AM. Our afterparty consists of Massive Attack on the stereo and a few bottles of rotgut cava in preparation for a day at the beach. And there is notably no evidence of anyone else doing anything more exciting (at least not in Playa d’en Bossa).

Exhibit D: Tuesday. The weather makes up for its hitherto Trabant-like unreliability by allowing enough sunshine for bikini-wearing and ice cream-eating. Early evening brings a phone call from a friend who pops down to the beach to share another bottle of cava (something of a theme of the weekend). This merges seamlessly into a lazy dinner at our local grill, Cafeteria Parador, where neighbours are scattered around the terrace feasting on garlic-rich meats and heavy Ibicenco blood sausages. We linger late and enjoy a nightcap before retiring at the utterly respectable hour of 1AM.

Conclusion: For all my first-timer fears summer seems to promise more of the stuff I’ve come to love over the last few months. Spontaneous afternoons at local watering holes, cheerfully polyglot crowds in the clubs, late dinners at out of the way restaurants and lingering afternoons at the beach.

I may have to reconsider all this come July but for the moment I’m delighted and not a little relieved to discover the ease with which Ibiza rolls with the seasons.

By Cila

• Ibiza Rocks Hotel will open probably around the middle of May (ish) - expect a surprise “do”…
• Pete Tong leaves Pacha and starts his own night at Eden called Wonderland
• Defected will be back at Pacha
• Amnesia opening party will be 14th June
• People from Ibiza opening party at Amnesia will be June 21st
• Rogue / Good For Nothing will be back at Judgement Sundays at Eden - opening party is 8th June
• Radio 1 Weekend will be Fri 1st- Sun 3rd August
• Space Opening 1st June
• Eden Opening May 31st

Pete Tong at Ibiza Rocks 2007 (at the Kaiser Chiefs gig)	Arctic Monkeys at Ibiza Rocks 2007