Like many, Jess’s first introduction to Ibiza came through a season. 

“A lot of my happiest memories are dancing with my friends on the Space terrace.” 

Summers became a familiar rhythm throughout her twenties and early thirties, before life slowly began asking different things of her. The decision to move permanently wasn’t one she’d carefully mapped out. It arrived in the middle of Covid, after weeks of lockdown in a small London flat with a toddler, while both she and her partner tried to work from home. Suddenly the city no longer felt like the place they wanted to raise a family. There was another reason too. Brexit was approaching the end of its transition period, and with it the freedom they’d always assumed would exist. 

“Just before Brexit, it felt like our last chance, because we wanted our daughter to have the same opportunities we’d had. To live abroad, work abroad, study abroad if she wanted to.”

Today, Jess lives in Santa Eulària with her partner, Silas, and their two daughters. Life looks very different from those early Ibiza summers. School finishes at two o’clock. Lunch is together, followed by homework, beach afternoons, swimming lessons and sailing school. “I’m teaching our youngest to swim at the moment,” she says. “She’s almost there.” Living on an island surrounded by water means it’s one of those childhood milestones that feels especially important. Her eldest daughter, meanwhile, has started sailing through the council programme in Santa Eulària. 

“The sailing school starts from the age of six and it’s amazing. They take them out into the sea and give them so much independence.”

After her youngest was born, Jess stepped away from advertising when returning regularly to London no longer felt possible. As the girls became older, she found herself at another crossroads. Go back to the career she’d spent fifteen years building, or begin something new. Music quietly found its way back in. It wasn’t something she’d planned. It simply resurfaced when life made room for it again. “My dad was a music teacher. I learnt piano and violin from a young age and I always sang.”

“On an island that’s known around the world for music, children spend so little time learning it at school.”

After buying a piano a few years earlier, she slowly returned to playing professionally, rediscovering a part of herself that had been waiting patiently beneath the surface. That new chapter wasn’t shaped by the island alone. It was shaped by the people around her, too.

“The power of the female network here… It’s a very strong female community. That’s the Ibiza I live in. If I ever needed help, I genuinely feel like within minutes I’d have a woman nearby saying, ‘Let me help you.'”

She describes a place where support feels instinctive rather than organised. It’s something she feels deeply grateful for, especially while raising two daughters. The rhythm of family life has changed too.

“I think most people would say the pace of life here is slower.”

School days ending in the early afternoon create space for family life that she hadn’t experienced in London. She is careful to acknowledge that not everyone’s experience is the same, especially with the rising cost of living, but she also believes Ibiza is often misunderstood. People assume living here has to be expensive. It can be. But everyday life isn’t usually lived in beach clubs.

“There are loads of things for families that don’t cost anything.”

She smiles as she talks about stopping at the Kiosko on Santa Eulària’s promenade, where “two toasties, a shandy and two Capri Suns cost about ten euros.” Those are the moments that stay with her. Motherhood has also changed how she experiences the island itself. Leaving Bethnal Green initially felt like leaving behind a community she’d spent years building. It didn’t take long before Ibiza quietly replaced it.

“I thought I’d lose that sense of community. Then after a couple of months living here I realised it’s like London… but on steroids.”

She can’t leave the house without bumping into someone she knows. Nor has she found the island less multicultural than London. Quite the opposite. Her daughters are growing up surrounded by classmates whose families come from Morocco, Algeria, Romania, Ecuador, Peru, Argentina, Colombia, England and many more besides. “It’s just normal.” For Jess, one of the greatest gifts they’ve been able to give their daughters is language.

“Our girls will grow up speaking English, Catalan and Castellano.”

Jess admits learning Spanish herself hasn’t always been easy. Adult conversations are one thing. Trying to mediate an argument between a group of excited six-year-olds is something else entirely. “I can have a really good conversation with an adult,” she laughs. “But if six-year-old girls have fallen out, it’s much harder.”

The places they return to are rarely complicated. Evenings in Plaza del Cañón. Long walks from Niu Blau towards Cala Martina before continuing around to Siesta. Beach afternoons that don’t need planning. Above everything else, though, it’s the way children fit naturally into island life that she hopes her daughters remember. Children are welcomed into restaurants, family dinners and late evenings in the square. They grow up alongside adults rather than apart from them, surrounded by grandparents, neighbours, friends and different generations sharing the same spaces.

“You don’t keep your children’s life and your life separate here. I hope they carry that kind of multi-generational living with them.”

As Ibiza continues to evolve, Jess’s hopes for the future aren’t centred around development or growth. They’re much quieter than that. “I hope ordinary people can still afford to live here.” She also hopes her daughters grow up understanding how fragile the island is. 

“I want my girls to respect the island. To understand how beautiful it is, but also how easily it could be lost.”

Living amongst pine forests, turquoise water and open countryside is a privilege, she believes, but one that comes with responsibility.