sUNSEt AT BENIRRAS

Most beaches you visit for the day, but there are a handful of Ibiza beaches you return to as the day begins to soften. Benirràs has long been the latter.

By early evening, the heat has started to ease and the first cars are already pulling away. With a little patience, there’s usually somewhere to park. Before reaching the beach, most drift through the small hippy market, where handmade shell bracelets, one-off jewellery pieces, flowing dresses, leather bags and wicker hats spill from little stalls. The sort of pieces that often end up coming home with you.

Down on the beach, you can usually find a small spot along the shoreline. The left-hand side is the usual choice, closer to where the drummers will gather later in the evening. The beach is shingly underfoot rather than soft sand, but the water is usually clear. Kids disappear almost immediately, swimming out to the buoys to make the most of another hour in the sea before daylight begins to fade. As the evening settles, someone inevitably heads back up to the little pizzeria behind the beach. Cardboard pizza boxes return tucked under arms, drinks are shared between families and nobody gives much thought to sandy feet or damp towels. Dinner happens wherever there’s space to sit.

Then the first drum begins.

One quickly becomes several, echoing across the cala before people gradually start making their way towards the sound. There is no announcement and no obvious beginning. It simply happens, as it has done for years. Locals, visitors and families gather around the old fishermen’s huts, children weaving between bare feet while others watch from parents’ shoulders. Some people dance straight away. Others stand quietly, letting the rhythm build around them.

As the sun lowers behind Cap Bernat, the Finger of God rising majestically from the water, the sky shifts through gold, amber and deep orange. The drumming gathers pace, the beat carrying across the beach in a way that feels unmistakably Balearic. For a few minutes, almost everyone is looking in the same direction. Then, as the last edge of the sun slips below the horizon, applause ripples across the beach.

It lasts only a moment.

The drums soften, conversations begin again and the kids curl into towels, tired from a day in the sea but reluctant to leave. Families linger just a little longer before making the slow walk back towards the car.

Watching the sunset at Benirràs is a ritual quietly woven into island life. Summer after summer, families return for exactly the same reason. Not because every sunset is different, but because somehow, every one of them feels like it is. An Ibiza ritual that continues to hold its place on the island.