‘VIPs have become regular clients. There’s no eccentricity anymore’: The return of Manumission, the wild party that revolutionized Ibiza

Mike and Claire McKay.Salvatore AquilaniSeptember is a very special month in Ibiza. It’s when you find out if the summer has gone well and you can finally relax… and, if it hasn’t been good, there’s not much you can do. “There are fewer tourists; the atmosphere is special,” says Mike McKay, 55. Along with his partner Claire Davies, 51 and his brother, Andy McKay, 57, he’s the co-founder of Manumission, the legendary party that revolutionized Ibiza’s nightlife in the 1990s. It disappeared in 2008, leaving behind 1.5 million happy customers.The party created by the three Manchester-born organizers propelled the golden age of clubbing on the island. Its philosophy blended the best of contemporary electronic music with the eccentric and free spirit that the hippies had brought to the island decades earlier. Seasoned with a heavy dose of sex, the Manumission nights stretched into days. In 1998, Mike and Claire took over an abandoned roadside brothel. They remodeled it in a week, painted everything pink and opened The Motel, a hotel without rules (or telephones). There, the party could keep going, with friends, DJs and various celebrities. It probably became the first hotel of its kind in the world: nobody went to sleep there. After two exhausting summers, it closed. From September 25 to 27 of 2026, after an 18–year-long hiatus, the wildest and most creative event returns, under a new name: Le Weekend Manumission. It will consist of three days of events, spread across three of the venues now managed by Andy in Sant Antoni de Portmany, a town on the western coast of Ibiza: Ibiza Rocks, the legendary Pikes Hotel and the 528 Club, where the main event will take place on Saturday, September 26. That’s when 12 hours of partying will be launched, to remember and celebrate what this island once was. “We’ve had to bring in drag performers from Barcelona, [as well as] many of our children’s friends, because there aren’t many people like that left in Ibiza. The island has lost that eccentric side – it’s all about money these days,” Mike laments. “Our children are so excited to be able to experience what we went through in the 1990s. And we feel the warmth of the people, who haven’t forgotten. The other day, for example, we went to the 528 Club and the garbage truck came by. One of the workers shouted to us, ‘Manumission! I remember you from the ’90s.’ That was the best part: that the workers and the fashion designers came to the party, people of all nationalities and backgrounds. With very little, you could do so much, because there was so much enthusiasm,” Mike recalls, sitting at the Pikes Hotel pool bar with Claire. The couple and their three children now live in Barcelona. Before that, they spent some time in the Ibiza countryside, surrounded by nature and animals, after Manumission came to an end. “Our children went to school in Port de San Miguel and, for a few years, we organized parties [for the kids]. I can tell you that they were the best school parties the island has ever seen,” Claire jokes.Manumission reached the island in 1994. That’s when Mike and Andy decided to visit Ibiza on holiday. Their original plan had been to go to Morocco, but they changed it at the last minute after an incident in their native Manchester ended the concept’s first incarnation. Mike, involved in the art scene, had returned to his city in the U.K. after being evicted from his apartment in New York. Andy was running what he considered to be the best party in Manchester, but when Mike arrived, he saw that it was “just a DJ and some people dancing.” So he suggested to his brother that they introduce elements he had seen and experienced in New York City’s nightlife scene, especially ones from queer culture. And, in just a few months, their first Manumission party became a revolution. “They say we had to [shut down the event] because of gang violence,” Mike recalls. “The truth is, it was just one incident… but it was a serious one. And I had already said from the beginning that, if there was violence, I wouldn’t continue.”“One night, a guy showed up with a knife [and] started attacking people on the dance floor. He left and came back with a can of gasoline, with the intention of burning everything down… he even splashed Andy with the fuel.”“It was a time when Ibiza had lost the momentum of its earlier days; there was a severe economic crisis and a sense of feeling out of place… nothing was happening,” Mike recalls, while describing that summer of 1994, when they convinced the owner of Ku to let them hold the event at Coco Loco (a secondary space within the legendary nightclub). Mike spent the summer traveling around the island of Ibiza, inviting everyone he met to the party. Andy arrived two days before the event and immediately thought that they weren’t going to make a single penny from that night. But it was a success. And, soon afterward, when Ku changed its name to Privilege, they moved to the main space: an iconic room with palm trees and a pool capable of holding up to 8,000 people. “They’d never seen such a diverse crowd. We invited the old regulars, everyone. And soon celebrities started coming, too, because nobody bothered them there. It was a time when you could go to the beach and have Anthony Hopkins standing naked behind you… and nobody would say a word,” Mike points out. This free-spirited nature could be found everywhere, from the coves to the DJ booth at Privilege. It also influenced the stage, where, every Monday, there was an erotic-festive performance. And, quite by accident, both Claire and Mike ended up as the main characters. “We brought a performance artist from Amsterdam, and it turned out that he didn’t want to work with any of the other girls. Only me,” Claire recalls. “I was a good English girl – I’m the daughter of a fireman – and I didn’t even go topless on the beach… but suddenly, I found myself up there on stage, starring in an erotic show in front of 8,000 people.” Since one of the cornerstones of Mike and Claire’s philosophy was never to ask anyone to do something on stage that they themselves would never do, he also ended up starring in these shows. “It was difficult, especially when a guy arrived who was spectacularly well-endowed. He also did yoga... and, well, you can imagine what he was like on stage.”“As a 55-year-old man, I can look back and say I did some very cool things, like going up on that stage. And I never set foot in the VIP area – I hate VIP areas,” Mike declares. His aversion to exclusive spaces is so strong that Guy Laliberté, the founder of Cirque du Soleil, once rolled up to the VIP area of Privilege and asked to meet him. Mike was on the dance floor and refused to go see him in the exclusive area. After several failed attempts to convince him, the staff informed the businessman that “Mike Manumission” wasn’t going to leave the floor. So, Laliberté and his companions took one of the tables from the VIP area and carried it to the main room, where the Englishman was. And that’s where the meeting took place.“Today, everything revolves around money. VIPs aren’t actually important – they’re just very rich people to squeeze the most out of. There’s no eccentricity. The oddballs, the ones who made this island special, have been expelled. Near the end of our story, the pressure from sponsors made our survival impossible,” Mike remembers, while reflecting on that last year of Manumission’s parties, which were held at the nightclub Amnesia.Near the end, there were also disputes with his brother, Andy, who remains involved in the island’s business scene. However, they eventually made peace, resulting in the upcoming project, Le Weekend Manumissio. In an email to EL PAÍS, Andy notes: “People come to 528 and Pikes because [these venues] remind them of the Ibiza that’s disappeared. Manumission was a key part of that. It left its mark on an entire generation. Nowadays, there’s nothing that leaves that impression; everything is too trendy. That’s why this Manumission event is more necessary than ever. Now, will it continue? We don’t know.”One of the activities taking place this Manumission resurrection weekend will be an event with Claire, focused on her memoir – The Motel: High Times in 90s Ibiza (2026) – which was published this past July. Centered on the delirious hoteliering adventure that they embarked on in 1998, it’s a sincere and highly-entertaining account of a chaotic era. The reader gets to know Mike and Claire’s unique way of life. They’re a couple like no other, and they remain together to this day. “Every week, I went to buy toys and costumes for The Motel. It was hilarious: nobody slept and people ran around naked in the hallways, from famous DJs to actors and models, mixed with friends and performers. One of the [guests was] our housekeeper. We were the only couple,” Claire notes. She’s tried to recount those days with brutal honesty, including the famous incident with a BBC broadcaster who spent a night at The Motel and found it so memorable that, the next morning, she “forgot” she had to go on air and was fired. Or the story of Andrew Innes, from the rock band Primal Scream, who, after staying at the converted brothel, described it as “the worst night’s sleep of his life.”“We’re hardest on ourselves. [I could only have] told our story this way. Not doing so wouldn’t acknowledge the respect and affection that kept this whole thing going,” she explains. “For the event,” Mike details, “we’ve enlisted designers who work at the Glastonbury Festival [and] musicians like Monkey Mafia… and we’ve recreated the facade of The Motel.” He also adds proudly that “there won’t be any music from after 1998.” This event doesn’t intend to make any concessions to the present. The island has already done enough in that regard.Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition