When The Water Speaks: a memoir of Ibiza by Bonnie Cullen, is a story of both person and place, dealing with change. When Bonnie arrives in 1976, the island of Ibiza is a backwater of post-Franco Spain, a place where farmers scythe by hand and leap over fires at Midsummer. Over the next four decades she will witness its transformation into the clubbing capital of the world. Cullen is a city dropout in search of a “more authentic” life. But how to deal with an amorous shepherd, throw an American party for a Spanish village, face the slaughter of your favourite pig? Years later, she will have to confront a heroine from the Civil War and learn to sleep when the thunk-thunking stops in the last club at dawn. Rootless despite a deep attachment to Ibiza and its people, the writer revisits two ghosts – an orchard and an ancient spring.
