Table of Contents
He's been cutting hair for 40 years. He doesn't want a smartphone. And he believes freedom is the only thing that matters.
Barbería Paco Navarro sits on a side street where the tourists never venture. No Instagram sign, no hipster interior. Just a shop window with yellowed photographs and a man who looks like he has stories to tell.
He does.
Paco arrived in Ibiza in 1976. With four friends, no plan, from Baza in Andalusia. Today, only two of them remain on the island. One builds houses. Paco cuts hair.
In between lies fifty years during which he did everything Ibiza made possible back then: designed clothes, sewed Mickey Mouse t-shirts, sold pareos. Cut hair in chiringuitos on the beach – Waikiki, Q Beach, Las Palmeras, Salinas. Names that only the old-timers know today.
"We combined everything," he says. "Cutting hair in the sand during the day, sewing clothes in the evening. That's how you survived back then."
The Eighties: 24 Hours a Day
Then VAT arrived. Six per cent, but enough to make the beach businesses impossible. The taxman wanted control. So Paco had to move into proper premises.
He opened the island's first hairdressing school – IBEPSA, on Avenida España. Three and a half years. Then he'd had enough of telling others what to do.
"I don't like being told what to do," he says. "It makes me feel exploited."
So he did his own thing.
Alongside this: three, four bars in nightclubs. One of them in Pacha. That was normal in the eighties – hairdresser by day, behind the bar by night. Working 24 hours because Ibiza demanded it of you.
"People criminalise housing today because it's so expensive," says Paco. "But in the eighties it was exactly the same. Ibiza has always been expensive. You have to adapt to what the island wants from you."
Freedom or Nothing
Paco doesn't take online bookings. No reservation system, no app. People simply walk in.
"I don't want to depend on technology," he says. "For me, technology means losing your freedom."
He works alone. Has done for nearly 40 years. His clients have grown old with him – some have been coming for 35 years, some are over 90. Loyalty in this business, he says, is different from anywhere else. Once you have someone's trust, it stays.
One of his regulars is Miguel Costa. Another was Pepe Reina, the Spanish national team goalkeeper. The photographs hang on the wall, between pictures of motorcycles and yellowed newspaper cuttings.
Ducati, Harley, California
Paco has owned many motorcycles. A Ducati, a Honda Fireblade, a VFR, various Harleys. Today he waxes lyrical about the Moto Guzzi California – the golden one that American police rode in the seventies.
"It's the motorcycle that gives me the most spirituality," he says. And before that sounds twee, he adds: "There's no life if you're not spiritually connected. When you're spiritually connected, you have inner peace."
From a man who spent half his life in nightclubs, that doesn't sound like mysticism. It sounds like experience.
The Ancestors
On the wall hang photographs older than anything else in the room. Barbers in white coats, stiff poses, Spain before the Civil War.
"That was a great-uncle," Paco explains. "He had to emigrate when the war came. France, Amsterdam. A relative sent me these photos 40 years ago. They went viral in Spain – there weren't many images from that era."
The craft of barbering runs in the family. But Paco has carried it forward in his own way – not with a white coat and stiff pose, but with long hair, motorcycles, and a philosophy that can be summed up in a single sentence:
"Ibiza is freedom. If you don't do what you want on Ibiza, there's no point living here. You'd better go somewhere else."
Today
Paco turns 65 this month. He's been married to the same woman for 34 years. His two daughters studied abroad – one now works in HR at Vilas, the other is finishing her degree.
And him? He stands in his shop every day, cuts hair, talks to people. Sometimes an old friend from the Classic Moto Club drops by. Sometimes a tourist who's lost their way. Sometimes someone who simply needs a haircut.
"Vilas is a creative centre for me," he says of the island. "Lots of light, different people from all over the world. You charge yourself with positive energy. The energy always rises."
Then he turns serious.
"But I'm against the investment funds that are ruining Ibiza. They're impoverishing the Ibicencos. Because things have no value. The only value is your inner peace and your happiness. That's the only thing that truly matters."
Whilst we're talking, the telephone rings. A regular called Flavio wants to come at half five. Paco agrees, hangs up, and carries on as if nothing had happened.
That's how things work here. Since 1976.
No app. No online bookings. Just a man, a pair of scissors, and fifty years of stories.
Barbería Paco Navarro.
Ibiza Town. C/. Pere Fracès, 16, 07800 Ibiza.
+34 971 316 421 or just walk in.
Text: Ibiza Voices Interview: January 2026
