Cala Comte

Cala Comte —Platges de Comte in Catalan, Cala Conta to almost everyone— is the stretch of coast you go to in order to watch the sunset on Ibiza. It is not one beach but several small coves one after another, of pale sand and very clear water, facing west over a string of islets.

A succession of short, shallow coves separated by tongues of low rock, at the western end of the municipality of Sant Josep de sa Talaia. What makes them recognisable is not the sand, which is unremarkable on Ibiza, but what you see from them: straight ahead, very close, is s'Illa des Bosc, and behind it appear sa Conillera and s'Espartar, the islets of the west. That silhouette is what turns any photograph taken here into a photograph of Ibiza.

You come by road from Sant Antoni de Portmany or by turning off at Sant Agustí des Vedrà, with the turning signposted. There is parking next to the coves, generous but not enough in July and August, and it is supervised: parking outside the marked spaces is fined. In season there is also a regular bus service. This is a fragile environment, very busy at dusk, so access is by the marked paths.

It has seasonal facilities and heavy footfall, but it is still open coast and not a town: there is no promenade and nothing built on the front line. The atmosphere changes completely over the course of the day — in the morning it is a quiet bathing cove, and by late afternoon it fills with people who have come only for the sunset. Anyone after calm should come early.

Sant Josep is the most coastal municipality on Ibiza, and Cala Comte is its best-known face. Buying along this strip —Cala Bassa, Port des Torrent, Sant Agustí— means buying in the western part of the island, the one with the sunsets and the one that attracts a good share of the island's foreign demand. The toll is the usual one on this stretch: road and car park shared with a great many people from May to September, and a fair amount of silence for the rest of the year.