Ibiza in the portrait of Dorian Gray

In The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde –sublime beyond his capabilities– presents us with a man who keeps his beauty intact while his moral degradation, his corruption, remains hidden in a portrait that ages and decays in his place.

The British organization Project Slingshot, which promotes awareness campaigns against industrial farming, has displayed a poster in the London Underground denouncing the amount of antibiotics that the industry administers to chicks that are forced to grow at breakneck speed and in abominable conditions. The poster reads: ‘Your chicken’s had more drugs than a hen do in Ibiza’ (‘Your chicken has had more drugs than a hen do in Ibiza’). And, of course, once again politicians and the tourism sector have raised an outcry because Ibiza is associated with drugs. Furthermore, the Consell d’Eivissa has even demanded, through an official letter, the withdrawal of the campaign because, in their opinion, it promotes a stereotype that harms Ibiza’s reputation.

But advertising campaigns do not create imaginaries out of nothing, but rather learn to detect and use those that make up the environment of their potential recipients. They must be able to condense in half a minute or in a poster in the underground what millions of people already share. That is why they work. And that is why, sometimes, they hurt. Not because they distort reality, but because they return it to us simplified and turned into a slogan. And, suddenly, the mirror of advertising gives us an image that we do not want to recognize.

It is surprising to see public officials and businessmen outraged by an advertising campaign, while season after season, they impassively observe the excesses that fuel exactly that reputation. It is easier to send a letter of protest than to confront the economic interests that sustain the tourism model. Furthermore, just a few days before the controversy erupted, the vice-president of the Consell d’Eivissa himself, Mariano Juan, who would sign the letter of repudiation, came out in defense of nightlife, completely forgetting that it is what explains the drug trafficking business. I have attended or participated, outside the island, in quite a few Criminology days and conferences where Ibiza has been presented as an example of a place that creates the right conditions to be a drug laboratory. As a journalist, I have spent many summers counting overdose deaths in clubs and drugged youths falling from balconies. Or deaths on the road due to some drugged person. But none of this has made our rulers indignant, no. And, suddenly, the mind of a brilliant advertiser connects Ibiza with drugs, and it seems as if they have mentioned the president's father in Aramaic. But the problem is not the finger pointing at the Moon, it is that this connection is as accurate as a William Tell arrow.

What should be offensive is that this association is so immediate and universal that a British advertising agency can turn it into a commercial hook with the certainty that everyone will understand the reference. That is the real scandal.

But there is another reading, even more inconvenient. This campaign brings together two industries that, at first glance, seem to have nothing to do with each other. But they do. On the one hand, an industry that markets meat from an intensive production system that turns millions of animals into simple units of performance. That tortures millions of animals (let's use the correct verbs). On the other hand, a tourism model that has treated Ibiza as a global product, exploiting its territory, resources, and even its identity to maximize profitability and which, as it could not be otherwise, has been accompanied by drug trafficking (it is not a dysfunction of the model; it is the same model). Animals in one case and an island and its inhabitants in the other, but, in the end, the same logic of treating what is alive as merchandise.

Perhaps that's why the campaign is so good. In fact, the more I analyze it, the better it seems. Without intending to, Project Slingshot ends up portraying much more than an island and a stereotype. It portrays how contemporary capitalism is capable of turning any reality – a territory, a reputation, or the life of an animal – into an exploitable resource without taking any moral consideration into account.

Institutions would like Ibiza to be Dorian Gray, to keep its face intact while the degradation remains hidden in a painting. But the neon lights scenario no longer deceives anyone. If Ibiza resembles Dorian Gray in anything, it is that it has sold its soul to some demon. But you already know how the immoral Dorian ended up… And, if you don't know, I wholeheartedly recommend you read the novel.