Original subtitles

The following programme contains strong language

and scenes of drug use

(GENTLE MEDITERRANEAN MUSIC)

NARRATOR: Ibiza, the most southerly of the Balearic Islands,

with an area of just 220 square miles,

the marriage of old and new is sometimes nothing more

than an uneasy truce.

All in all, the perfect place for jaded executives...

(ROCK MUSIC)

..tired housewives...

..and stunning senoritas.

WENSLEY CLARKSON: Ibiza starts as this dream place for hippies,

but then it became the drugs capital of Europe.

(INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC)

If there's a plane going to Ibiza, I guarantee you

there was 10 people on that plane taking ecstasy tablets out there.

5,000 pills a pop, 50,000 E's on one plane.

LISA GOOD: It was the craziest place to be in the world.

It was the best place to be in the world.

DANNY CLOCKWORK: That was partying in Ibiza.

If you didn't die, you had a story to tell the next day.

WAYNE: You soon realised that it can be quite dark.

Gangsters, cartels,

people big and strong enough to kick the fuck out of you.

MARVIN: (GRUNTING) Ibiza was a very loving place.

(HE GRUNTS)

But I never went nowhere without guns and knives.

Like that was my point, fucking kill me or you're going to die.

EL SAPO:

(HE CHUCKLES)

(THEME MUSIC STARTS)

# It could be a spoonful of diamond

# It could be a spoonful of gold

# Just a little spoon of your precious love

# Satisfy my soul #

(THEME SONG ENDS)

(PROJECTOR WHIRRING)

(UNSETTLING MUSIC)

EL SAPO:

(SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC)

(MUSIC FADES)

(UPBEAT MUSIC)

DIRECTOR: Did he take drugs?

(LAUGHING)

(FUNKY MUSIC)

DIRECTOR: How did you first get involved in crime, and why?

Crime.

Haha.

I like the word "crime".

Let's say, how did I become a fringe delinquent?

Well I can't complain about my childhood,

because I love Switzerland.

But as I got older I did not fit in.

Their main focus is basically money and work.

And those are two things that shouldn't be the basis of life.

And so when I smoked my first joint as a young man,

I became alternative person and I started dealing

and getting into the hash business.

I got arrested different times

and I always managed to get out of the court case without getting time,

but my lawyer advised me

not to stay in Switzerland if I was gonna go on in that business.

And that was like a turning point in my life

where I decided to move to Ibiza.

The whole point was to become a professional in doing nothing.

And yet enjoy life to its fullest, actually.

The island of Ibiza was known as a hippie mecca.

It was on the route to going into India.

It was basically poor, people were poor,

and were happy to rent their fincas, their little houses to hippies.

The finca I lived in had no water, no electricity.

It had a well, so yeah, we'd wash by pulling water out from the well.

And basically spent the day smoking and playing the guitar

and making love.

It was pretty cool. (CHUCKLES)

(DRUMMING)

When I first came to Ibiza in 1970, it was a totally different world.

(ROCK MUSIC)

# Hey, you!

# You're losing, you're losing

# You're losing

# You're losing your vitamin C... #

JEAN: (CHUCKLING) Hey, man, what have you got for me today?

DEALER: That depends.

I've got some Nepalese.

I got some Afghani.

It's more expensive, but this stuff will get you stoned for longer.

Anything bigger?

Hmm.

This came in from India.

(FLAME WHOOSHING)

JEAN: Becoming a dealer, for me, was like a natural process,

because I liked smoking and I found that

if I sold part of what I bought, I could smoke for free.

That's the motor behind that type of dealing.

And then that can evolve into more and more,

because you say, "Oh, this works."

(MUSIC CONTINUES)

So, do you want some?

Oh, no, thanks. Doctor's orders you know!

(BOTH LAUGHING)

(GUITAR STRUMMING)

# When the sun comes arisin'

# And the sand is shining bright #

PAQUITA: (IN SPANISH)

# And the sand is shining bright # PAQUITA:

# Shine your eyes on me #

(SONG ENDS)

OLLY: Living on this island so long, I know everything, I know everybody.

I can't walk around this place without everyone going,

"Alright Olly?" "Hola, que tal."

All I can say is I'm so grateful for my upbringing here.

I think drugs opened up my world and I smashed it all my life.

I first come, probably, in 1975 with my mum and dad

and spending summers here all the time.

My dad was a bit of a hippie back in them days

and obviously there was a lot of hash smoking,

a lot of acid was being taken, and a lot of nudism.

It's the reason everyone comes here, 'cause it's so relaxed.

If you love drugs, drinking, sex and good music, you can have it all.

Like in England, you had to hide,

tell lies to everyone what you're up to.

Even me with my stupid dreads,

like, yeah, if I walked around London and that,

I'd get all the yardies taking the piss out of me.

But over here you could be just free and liberal.

You could do anything you wanted.

DIRECTOR: How are we doing? Happy with you, Bamboo?

Let's start.

(METALLIC TAPPING)

(TAPPING CONTINUES)

BAMBOO: When I came here to Ibiza,

it was this time period where the people started becoming spiritual.

(GONG TOLLING)

I immediately felt at home.

And this was from my point of view,

the motivation to say, "Let's make a party here."

(UPBEAT MUSIC)

And we became famous

for full moon party in the mountain of San Juan.

(UPBEAT MUSIC)

This was before the techno

and we have two, three hundred people all on LSD.

And we were dancing.

When I see nowadays a video clip and there is thousands of people,

the only thing they do is this.

We were getting crazy.

(UPBEAT MUSIC)

That was dancing.

We let the music and the movement come out of you.

(UPBEAT MUSIC)

You want me to show you how it looks like? OK.

That was a little moment of it.

There was no mind.

It was let go.

DIRECTOR: Where did you get the acid?

Who was bringing it onto the island then?

It was not strangers, it was from the group.

EL SAPO: (IN ENGLISH)

JEAN: The first people who came from the United States bringing LSD,

one of their philosophies was, this is mind-altering.

MAN: All sorts of hallucinations are possible...

JEAN: It'll change peoples' perspective on life.

Therefore, if we spread this out, we will be able to change society

and bring this whole system down

more than trying to make money out of the sales.

I started taking when I was about 13.

Sorry Mum and Dad. (LAUGHS)

Grandma always knew anyway.

LSD opened lots of channels to me, dimensions, it made me feel good.

But not when you have a bad trip, I'm telling ya.

I just remember the party starting

and thinking, "Fuck I need to get out of here."

So I ran and ran and ran. It was like Forrest Gump, honestly.

I ran and ran.

I'm having the worst experience of my life,

I just wanted to die at that point, and I'm thinking, "Fuck me,

you are never coming back from this experience, Olly."

(FUNKY MUSIC)

DIRECTOR: Did the hippie lifestyle ever appeal to you?

(HE CHUCKLES)

(LAUGHING)

NARRATOR: One of the first things to realise about Ibiza is that nothing

is done in a rush.

Tourism is certainly the island's number one industry.

WENSLEY: My family were amongst the first tourists.

And my interest in crime in Spain

is mainly because of my childhood in Ibiza.

I was lucky my parents were so laid back,

that they'd mixed with the hippies straightaway.

And it was such an eye-opener when I became a teenager going to Ibiza.

You know, in terms of drinking, in terms of girls, in terms of drugs.

And this was the start of the party island it later became.

OLLY: Back in the early days, it wasn't clubs, it was more restaurants.

And fincas.

All the tables and the chairs had been removed and it become clubs.

And it was a free-for-all.

Anyone could do anything they wanted in the clubs.

Any drug you wanted.

Orgies.

There was all sorts going on.

That's why I call it the Wild West.

WENSLEY: It was pretty obvious that the hippies were the ones

that kickstarted the drug scene.

And acid on microdots.

Quite often, some guy would come up to you and say just open your mouth.

Boom. And there's a thing put on my tongue.

But it was almost like a marketing device for the dealers,

because then you would feel obliged to buy the hash from the dealer.

And these one-man-band operators,

they'd go on various hippie trails, picking up loads of hash, come back,

whether it be a bus from Afghanistan,

a boat from Lebanon, an aeroplane from Israel,

they'd bring it back, sell it, and that would enable them

to live happily for six months without having to have a normal job.

JEAN: I went to Israel and when I came back,

I was carrying about 200 grams of hash on me.

Made little balls of it, wrapped it with plastic and tape,

and I swallowed 60 of those.

The thing is I ate as much as I could on the plane, so when

I arrived home, suddenly, I gotta go to the bathroom and I actually

I shat in the bathtub because I didn't want to lose the pellet.

But that was my life was always something like that happening.

But I recuperated those 60 balls,

and then sold it to friends and people I knew.

Just hippie dealing, you know.

(PSYCHEDELIC MUSIC)

JEAN: Are going to have a good night on this.

(SINGER VOCALISING)

DIRECTOR: Is that what it was like round at yours, Jean Michel?

Kind of. Very colourful people. Nice atmosphere.

And some days it really looked like a doctor's waiting room.

It was never like a business in a sense to become rich.

The idea was just to make a small living

and just not be part of the whole nine-to-five situation.

WENSLEY: Hippies sold themselves as being these gentle souls who were

trying to help people get out of their own mindsets by taking drugs.

Bullshit, they were flogging drugs.

But they could see with Ibiza, the market was there,

it's primed, it's perfect.

And hippies, they're all good at business.

EL SAPO: (IN ENGLISH)

OLLY: Well I think people were having it easy to smuggle anything

back in them days.

The hippies could walk through customs with drugs.

'Cause there's always been a connection with Morocco and North Africa,

it's just like a river for smugglers.

But these weren't the entrepreneurs, these weren't the mafias.

They paved the way and they made it like a place that all the big firms

knew that they could come.

EL SAPO: (IN ENGLISH)

(HANDBRAKE RATCHETS)

(ENGINE TURNS OFF)

(DOOR CLOSES)

MAN: Fucking hippies.

WENSLEY: The organised criminals come along,

slightly suspicious of these hippies with their long hair.

(KNOCKING)

But in the end, I think, the hippies had to step back,

because the threats were coming from the crime groups were very real.

What do you want?

WENSLEY: It was a sort of natural selection.

Ah that's pretty heavy.

Luckily nothing like that ever happened to me.

But some things like that did happen to some friends of mine.

Tough.

(INDISTINCT STREET CHATTER)

HARRY: I was working with one particular firm

which was a London firm.

Just making sure that stuff runs smoothly and everybody got on OK.

Like a troubleshooter.

I grew up in south London.

Childhood was very hard.

My father committed suicide when I was young.

And I was in a children's home.

So everything I tried to attempt to do was off my own back.

Just wanted more from life than could be given to me.

I decided that London wasn't the place for me.

So I thought I'd try abroad.

I travelled onto Ibiza

and thought, oh this could be the place to earn money.

So yes, did start putting myself about to get to know people.

The drug scene in Ibiza was run

by English, German, Dutch firms.

Most of it was all bought in in the summer,

because the winter obviously the sea could be very rough.

You could lose a hell of a lot.

But Ibiza became an island

which was concentrated on for getting stuff in and out.

So then even if it came in and wasn't used there, it was then

taken off to other countries,

because it was a good starting off point.

(TENSE MUSIC)

PAQUITA: (IN SPANISH)

HARRY: (IN ENGLISH) People came from all over Europe,

and what you had to be careful of was every other individual

stepping on somebody else's toes.

So normally it was always a meeting

to decide what areas you're going to take over.

The coves were individually controlled by different firms,

so no-one crossed each other's lines.

I wouldn't say, you know, that everything was sweet,

but the violence obviously was always kept very low profile,

because it didn't want to involve authorities.

So it was always... sorted out sensibly.

And anybody who didn't play the game was moved on.

DIRECTOR: And is that a euphemism?

Take it any way you like!

(SYNTHETIC MUSIC)

EL SAPO:

DIRECTOR: What happened?

DIRECTOR: How did you hide it in the boats?

(DISCO MUSIC)

HARRY: In the '80s, the clubs were bigger, posher...

(POP MUSIC)

..but I just got involved in making sure

the venues, the clubs, run smoothly.

(MUSIC CONTINUES)

It started off easy money laundering,

and then later on heavier things.

I always had someone with me as a backer,

not that we ever needed it.

I've got some photos of me out in Ibiza.

This is me at one of the clubs. Relaxing.

Having fun.

Another one is when I did go over in a disguise because if it comes

on top, you don't want everybody chasing you up the road, do you?

So you put on a little disguise.

(TENSE MUSIC)

No-one had really heard of police corruption in them days.

But this is why you have people like me on it.

We used to invite them to functions.

Looked after him.

Even put on charity dos for the police,

'cause they love a festival don't they, the Spanish?

It was just thank you money.

To say, we're glad to be here and thank you for your hospitality.

Yeah, put it that way. (LAUGHS)

So they left you alone, basically.

To be quite honest actually, I didn't know anyone actually

at that time that was actually nicked for major crimes out there.

WENSLEY: Most of the police officers on the island were

related to people on the island.

And I wouldn't say they were all corrupt but corruption was rife.

But as drugs emerged in the 1980s,

it became clear the police would have to have a bigger presence.

LUIS: (IN SPANISH)

DIRECTOR: Were you dancing?

TV PRESENTER: Psychiatrists say the drug nicknamed ecstasy

can be used for a variety of psychiatric disorders.

BAMBOO: Well ecstasy is a total different drug than LSD.

It has something to do with intense feeling.

(PSYCHEDELIC MUSIC)

We made a ritual, took it in a circle,

we are holding each other and just being in this feeling space.

Only with the feeling, feeling.

No trip.

Feeling.

Sharing the feeling together.

Intense.

I had to generate some income.

I found out that there was a demand for ecstasy

and I thought maybe I would get into that a little bit.

One friend of mine

came back from California with a batch that was in powder form.

I would go to the pharmacy,

buy some bottles of- It was yeast pills.

Then I would empty those yeast pills

and put the MDMA in it and make my own pills.

But I didn't even feel what I was doing was wrong,

it had no negative consequences, it didn't create addicts,

people like, "Ahh! I'm gonna kill my grandma to take- get her money

so I can buy a pill," you know?

It wasn't that, so I wasn't even thinking in those terms.

My idea was to share something that I felt could've an effect

on somebody's personal growth.

LUIS: (IN SPANISH)

(LIGHTER CLICKS)

WENSLEY: I remember hearing that members of the Sannyasin cult

were actually the ones who first brought MDMA onto the island.

Because, of course, they'd been using MDMA for therapy.

(PEOPLE SINGING)

(SOMEONE WHOOPS)

They weren't the only ones, but they were the early ones.

They were the followers of Osho.

Also known as Bhagwan.

A controversial master at the time.

OLLY: The California Sannyasi crew,

they come over here bringing capsules of this more natural MDMA

than people take now.

And it got discovered, but yeah, what a load of bollocks.

He wasn't a guru, he was a rip-off artist with MDMA.

Sorry, Osho!

(PSYCHEDELIC MUSIC)

LUIS: (IN SPANISH)

(PSYCHEDELIC MUSIC)

WENSLEY: (IN ENGLISH) One of the ironies of MDMA is that,

having started off as a therapeutic drug,

it took certain individuals to recognise the potential of it

as a recreational drug, and those people were the hippies.

And, of course, the perfect experimental area to test out

the beauty of this drug was Ibiza.

It ticked all the right boxes.

(PSYCHEDELIC MUSIC)

HARRY: I've never taken one in my life.

It wouldn't fit with my moods.

But seeing people enjoy themselves

and not stop dancing for 12 hours at a time,

I thought well it must be something good here.

OLLY: First time I ever got an ecstasy, I remember my brother

buying it when I was 14 years old.

I found heaven, basically.

It's no euphoria like ecstasy.

All my traumas from my past just lifted away from me.

Everyone was in love.

It made me just think, I just found my future.

Fuck going home.

I'm going to stay in this place forever.

It brings the best out of everyone. It is a miracle drug.

(MUFFLED PARTY AMBIENCE)

LUIS: (IN SPANISH)

(PENSIVE MUSIC)

JEAN: (IN ENGLISH) Sometimes when I went for a walk

and I'd sit somewhere, there was like some dodgy characters around.

But I thought, no, you're just being paranoid and I just moved on.

LUIS: (IN SPANISH)

(IN ENGLISH) I had a friend in Switzerland

who asked me for some ecstasy pills.

They didn't find them there.

So I'd fill a vitamin bottle with ecstasy pills

and send them to Switzerland with a toothbrush

and a note saying, oh, such and such left this bag in my house.

He might pass through Switzerland.

Could you keep this and give it to him?

So in a way, I was covering them.

And my friends would send me some money back.

LUIS: (IN SPANISH)

JEAN: (IN ENGLISH) When you're a dealer,

when you're selling illegal substances,

you're living a little bit like a spy.

You're always kind of looking over your shoulder.

You know, you don't befriend anybody,

'cause somebody could be a cop, so you're always on your guard.

But I had no idea of what was waiting for me.

(WIND BLOWING)

(TENSE MUSIC)

I was actually leaving to go to Valencia,

and I went to my office where I kept those pills,

to stash them away.

LUIS: (IN SPANISH)

(SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC)

(COPS SHOUTING IN SPANISH)

(TENSE MUSIC)

(COPS CONVERSING IN SPANISH)

LUIS: (IN SPANISH)

JEAN: (IN ENGLISH) They drove me to my house.

And they start searching.

Like they want to find like the motherlode.

(TENSE MUSIC)

(IN SPANISH)

DIRECTOR: (IN ENGLISH) What was going through your mind at that point?

(IN SPANISH)

JEAN: (IN ENGLISH) Well, my heart was sinking.

I was really at a low point.

(RUMMAGING SOUND)

I knew I was in trouble.

But I knew I could be in much more trouble.

My only hope was for them not to find the main stash.

(IN SPANISH)

(SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC)

(TILE SCRAPING)

JEAN: (IN ENGLISH) I heard the tiles in my bedroom move, right.

Khh! It had a very specific sound.

(TENSE MUSIC)

(IN SPANISH)

(BOTTLES CLINK)

(UNSETTLING MUSIC)

DIRECTOR: (ENGLISH) What did it feel like when you knew the game was up?

Well, it felt like the fucking end of the world, didn't it?

Like, I knew I'd been caught red-handed.

There was no getting out of this, because proofs were there.

Like, I knew I was off to jail

and I knew there was a price I was gonna pay.

(PENSIVE MUSIC)

WENSLEY: That arrest of Jean Michel Fueter

marked the end of the hippie dream.

No longer could they run their own little drug enterprises,

nobody coming near them,

that had all gone.

The police targeted the hippies originally,

even though the professional crime groups had started to come in,

because they were easy targets.

But, in effect, by doing that, a vacuum has been created which

the professional criminals are starting to fill and then they

could just continue operating as criminals

without having any problems.

(TENSE MUSIC)

EL SAPO:

DIRECTOR: Do you respect the police in Ibiza?

EL SAPO:

DIRECTOR: After your spell in prison,

did you think about turning away from drug trafficking?

EL SAPO:

(CHUCKLING)

(UPBEAT MUSIC)

PAQUITA: (IN SPANISH)

LUIS:

(UPBEAT MUSIC)

HARRY: (ENGLISH) Firms that were developed in the hash

moved then into ecstasy.

Then it just got bigger and bigger and bigger.

But greed took over.

(UPBEAT MUSIC)

And one of the most important things to me was getting to a younger scene.

And as I'm getting older and older and older, it didn't mix.

I just thought, "Well, I've had my time out there."

So I left and then decided to do my own thing in London.

(UPBEAT MUSIC)

It does make you think that it's not worthwhile.

And I said, "Right, well, that's a warning,

that's come to the end of my running."

And, um, stopped.

(CALMING TUNE PLAYING)

JEAN: At the time, you know, if I hadn't been arrested,

when the discotheque ecstasy use grew,

I might have been in a good position

to actually make a killing financially.

But at the same time, there's no way I would put myself into that

shadow again, because in the end you always kind of lose.

(TUNE CONTINUES)

OLLY: I've had the best experiences

and wouldn't change it for the world.

I didn't stop until about a year ago.

But yeah, I had a brain tumour removed last year, I was in a coma.

Of course it had something to do with my indulgent in drugs.

Yeah, I was thinking about it now.

But I don't regret it at all.

But it's not drugs. These are party drugs.

I'm not sitting there with a needle with a thing out.

I'm out for fucking seven days talking to people non-stop.

BAMBOO: I don't have any more this kind of feeling that

I have to take any drugs.

I am feeling fine the way I am.

Thankfully.

EL SAPO:

(HE CHUCKLES)

(DISCO MUSIC THUMPING)

WAYNE: Before we all came, Ibiza was this beautiful, lovely spot.

(CONFETTI BURSTING)

We were the ones that brought all of this club life.

Remembering you're high out of your brains, it was insanity.

(SPLASH)

LISA: There was a scary moment, that made me think what am I doing?

What on earth am I doing?

EL SAPO:

CHRIS: He's given me a bag of E's, I said, "What the fuck?

He said, "Well, you go and earn your money with them."

It boils back down to that fucking age old problem of greed,

stupidity and greed.

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