S'Espalmador sits just off Formentera's tip, small and low and separated from its larger neighbor only by that tidal sandbar. Canoeists paddle across the strait; yachts heading between Ibiza and Formentera drop anchor in its lee. The island's appeal is precisely its lack of development. Freshwater springs surface where you would not expect them on so small a rock, and a mud-bath draws bathers who coat themselves in gray silt and let it dry in the sun. It is the kind of place that feels like a secret, even though thousands of boaters know exactly where it is.

Just to the north lies a smaller companion, Illa des Porcs, which translates as Pig Island. The name is not decorative. The islet once served as a hideout and stronghold for pig smugglers working these waters. In 1861 the En Pou lighthouse rose here to mark the southern edge of the Es Freus strait, the channel that separates the island group from Ibiza. For sailors threading between the two big islands, that light has been a fixed point for more than a century and a half, blinking above a rock that once concealed contraband.

The economics of S'Espalmador tell their own story. In 1932 the Cinnamond family bought the entire island for the equivalent of 252 euros. For generations it stayed in their hands. Then, in March 2018, despite the Formentera government's efforts to purchase and protect it, the Catalan architect Norman Cinnamond and his sister Rosy sold the island to two wealthy Belgian brothers, Christian and Jean Cigrang, for 16 million pounds, roughly 18 million euros. In under a century, the price had climbed by a factor no one in 1932 could have imagined, a measure of how rare untouched Mediterranean coastline had become.

Even a private island cannot escape scrutiny. In August 2024, Spanish authorities opened an investigation into possible environmental crimes after reports that a music video for Katy Perry's single "Lifetimes" had been filmed among the island's ecologically sensitive sand dunes without proper authorization from the Balearic environment department. The episode captured the tension that defines S'Espalmador: a place valued precisely for its fragility, coveted by people with the means to reach it, and protected by rules that visitors, famous or not, are expected to honor.