Ses Illetes

Ses Illetes is the beach through which many people know Formentera: a tongue of brilliant white sand at the northern tip of the island, with water so clear and so shallow that the bottom is visible tens of metres from the shore. It lies inside the ses Salines nature park, and that shapes everything you can do there, starting with getting in.

A long, narrow strand on the des Trucadors peninsula, the arm of land that stretches north towards s'Espalmador. It is so narrow that from the same spot you can see both coasts: the western one, of still, transparent water, and the eastern one, more exposed. The sand is very fine and pale, the bottom shelves gently and there is no rock; behind it nothing is built, only low dune and salt-tolerant vegetation.

Access by vehicle is regulated by the Consell Insular de Formentera within the nature park, with entry control and paid parking during the season. There is a maximum number of spaces and the rates change according to the time of year; on foot and by bicycle entry is always free, as it is for island residents. It is worth checking the current year's conditions before setting out, because they are reviewed each season and this is the detail that most catches out anyone arriving by car.

This is a nature park beach: there is a seasonal bar, but nothing resembling a promenade or a built-up front. The mood is that of a long day at the beach, and in summer a great many people arrive by boat and anchor offshore. There is a warning attached to that which is worth taking seriously: the bottom is protected posidonia meadow and anchoring is restricted to the designated areas.

On Formentera the island and the municipality are one and the same, so any home on the island is a few minutes from here: ten or fifteen by car from es Pujols, a little more from Sant Francesc or La Mola. What Ses Illetes offers is not proximity —on an island of this scale everything is close— but a guarantee of landscape: it is inside the nature park and nothing will be built in front of it. The other side of that is that the island lives a very marked season, and what in May is an empty tongue of sand is in August the busiest beach in the Pitiusas.