In pictures: a time capsule of sensual, sun-drenched Ibizan hedonism

The pictures seem to depict a more permissive attitude towards nudity when “being naked frolicking on the beach” was commonplace. “Now, nudists are few and far between. When you spot a nudist in Salinas nowadays – which, back in the ’80s was the nudist beach – you can’t help but blush and think it’s so rebellious,” explains Salahi. While Maspons’ nudes are sensual, they’re also permeated by a sense of irreverence. Bodies are presented as not only erotic but fun. A naked woman poses behind a sign delineating the nudist and regular section of the beach, a young man with his friends in their 80s co-ordinated clubbing boiler suits and bolero jackets exposes his tanned chest and sticks out his tongue and, and lounging semi-naked sunbathers on the beach, a person is dress inexplicably as the Pink Panther. “I still to this day ask people if they know who this dressed up Pink Panther was,” Salahi tells us. “He’s made several appearances throughout Oriol’s archive in lots of different places. We know it’s a man because he’s hailing down a car holding his Panther head under his arm. It’s very funny.”

These sun-drenched scenes, viewed here and now, are undercut by a sense of loss that’s makes them more than just beautiful photographs. They are precious artefacts documenting a very particular and revered moment in time. They raise complicated questions about what we’ve gained and what we may have lost. Alex Maspons tells Dazed, “Ibiza, nowadays, has most of its attractiveness. It still has the climate, the location and good restaurants. What else ? Nothing compares to the old times. In the 80s, there was a constant comparison between Ibiza and Marbella: Ibiza was authentic and Marbella superficial; Marbella was the right place for rich people who wanted exposure. Ibiza was the opposite. Today, I feel that Ibiza has been taken over by all the people who would’ve been drawn to Marbella in the 80s.”

Reflecting on the wider implications of the book, he writes, ”Oriol Maspons Ibiza is a reflection of evolution and involution. It can make us reflect on whether we are more or less free today that we were 50 years ago, and on what we have lost along the way.” As a final question, I ask him what he thinks we can learn from looking at his father’s pictures of Ibiza in the decades gone-by but I’m not quite prepared fro the devasting pathos and percipience of his repsonse: “Happiness isn’t forever. We were happy and we didn’t know it.”