English Translation

WHEN EMMA ROIG ASKARI (VALENCIA, 1968) was proposed to edit a book about luxury houses, her first reaction was rejection. The journalist felt that this project was “far removed from her professional expertise”. “I started with pure and hard journalism working in El Pais. Later I continued in magazines, then in television…. Doing a coffee table book was to enter a world of that I knew little about. I was mulling over the offer from Vendome Press until I finally decided to accept: I was very excited by the idea of learning something new”. This was the philosophy that guided the commentator of Atresmedia, ambassador of Christie’s and collaborator of Vanity Fair in the process of creating Inside Ibiza (Vendome Press, 2025), a photographic book of dream homes owned by celebrities.

“Ibiza was one of the favourite places of the Phonenicians, They brought Tanit, a Goddess that is still idolized” – Emma Roig Askari

such as Cayetana Fitz-James Stuart, the painter Grillo Demo or Gimmo Etro; all built on the largest of the Pitiusas islands. Among the 328 color pages of the publication, illustrated with the work of renowned interior photographer Ricardo Labougle, the first of the homes is that of Roig Askari. “We built it from scratch. I had the invaluable help of architect Rolf Blakstad, of Blakstad Design Consultants [a prestigious Ibizan firm founded in the 1950s] and landscape architect Tania Compton [former editor of the British edition of House& Garden], who had lived on the island as a young woman. I also had to get my elbows in and study. After all, I’m not a professional decorator or architect. I just do things for myself because at this point I know what I like and what works for my family.” Roig Askari’s identity is marked by the Mediterranean. Although she currently lives between London, New York, Madrid and the Balearic Islands, she grew up in a wealthy family on the Levantine coast. His father is the businessman Francisco Roig Alfonso, known as Paco, brother of the executive president and main shareholder of the supermarket chain Mercadona, Juan Roig, and of the president of Villarreal Club de Fútbol, Fernando Roig. He was also president of Valencia Club de Fútbol for five years. He taught her “what it was to live without privileges”.

“When I was 16, he put me to work on Saturdays in a Mercadona, from six in the morning to two in the afternoon, scrubbing aisles and cutting sausages. Working in the real world was going to teach me what life was all about. And so it has been,” she explained recently in an interview. His mother, María Manuela Segarra Soler, who died in 2017, was a descendant of the founders of the oldest shoe company in Spain, Calzados Segarra, and the founder of the Zeta gallery in Valencia in the eighties; she was also the one who passed on her artistic sensibility. From that marriage were born Emma and her three younger siblings, Maida, Angela and Francisco, who lead a more reserved life than the firstborn of the family. After completing a degree in Journalism at the University Complutense de Madrid, Roig moved to the United States in 1991 with a Fulbright scholarship to pursue a Master of Arts degree at New York University. From there, she was a correspondent for El País, Televisa and CBS News, and Content Director for Plural Entertainment. During her time in America, more than a decade, her relationship with Ibiza waned. “Whaen I was a teenager, I used to sail with my friends from Jávea to the island. I discovered it little by little through the sea. When I got married, I went back with my husband and started to get to know it by sea…. Land and air!”, she tells us enthusiastically.

Thanks to an idea of her husband, Mamoun Askari – a British financier of Iraqi origin, great-grandson of one of the founders of Iraq and descendant of an Ottoman general wh she met during his stage in the Big Apple – their Balearic refuge came to life. In the early 2000s, with three children – Alexander, Clara and Francisco – and having traded Manhattan for London, the family began looking for a vacation home that would suit their needs. Roig Askari had always preferred to rent and “return the keys” at the end of the season, until her husband decided it was time to settle down. “We started with the Hamptons, then Greece and then Mallorca, because he plays golf and has a lot of courses,” explained to AD magazine in the middle of last year about the home that illustrates these pages. In 2013 the journalist took Askari to a mountain in Ibiza, on a plot of land available for sale overlooking the sea and told him: “Give me a sunset”. He was reluctant. “A small island, with a reputation for crazy nights and only one golf course did not appeal to him at all. That’s why I took him to discover the island out of season,” she recalls. However, for her, the connection with Ibiza was fully emotional. “The smell of the countryside, the flowers, the valleys, that light, the breeze, the cliffs…. None of that I find anywhere else. I have always felt that it has something very close, very familiar. Its light is very similar to that of Valencia and, in general, it is as if it were my land. From my terrace, I can see the Montgó and I feel at home,” she explains. Little by little he was convinced and that same year the family bought a 4,400 square meter plot “on a super steep mountain” on the west side overlooking the sea. The result? A Mediterranean-inspired house that they visit all year round.

The advantage of having worked with Rolf, my architect, is that he was born on the island and knows it by heart: how the entrance and exit of the sun varies according to the season, what problems he was going to have with the stone that we were going to drill… He was the key to success. His father, Rolph Blakstad, was one of the greatest experts in Ibizan architecture and the second generation of his practice.” The inspirations for this house are based on the buildings that, throughout her life, have marked Roig Askari. On the ceiling of the living room there is a vault that pays homage to the Arab baths she saw during her childhood in Valencia. One of the domes refers to one of her favorite buildings: the Pantheon of Rome. The spiral staircase is a reproduction of the one that a Valencian architect, Rafael Guastavino Moreno, designed for the library of Carnegie Mellon University, in the United States, at the beginning of the 20th century. And the pool house is inspired by an old Moroccan building that she discovered at an auction through a 19th century watercolor. “There are structures, such as the staircase or the vaults that would not have been possible without my sister, the designer Maida Roig, who directed the project. She found the right Valencian craftsmen and builders, who knew the techniques necessary to create the curves that date back to the time of the Arabs”.

However her house is only one example of the luxury that can be found in Ibiza, “My intention with this book has been to show to the readers another side of this island, beyond the stereotype of parties and tattoos. The attraction of Ibiza is nothing new: it was one of the favourite places of the Phoenicians, who brought Tanit, who represents the hedonism and the step between life and death. She continues to be idolised on the island. Under her mantle the light and energy of Ibiza coexists today with a diverse panorama of personalities: artists, creatives, visionaries, icons… The funny this is that, in spite of inhabiting a common place, each one has a very different personality from the previous one.

The first celebrity tourist to set foot on the island, according to Roig in the introduction to Inside Ibiza, was the Austrian Archduke Luis Salvador in 1867. A century after, the Pitiusa started to grow socially vibrant and to build its mythology. The singer Freddie Mercury was a regular of the hotel pikes, sometimes with the artist Grace Jones and it became a focal point for the international music scene. Meanwhile, Lee Scott, Andy Warhol’s art dealer, and the artists Jean-Michel Basquiet and Keith Haring celebrated one of the industry’s most talked-about parties at one of its nightclubs. It has become the go-to destination for the super model Kate Moss. In the last year, the boats of the actor Leonardo DiCaprio, the multimillionaire Jeff Bezos, British Vogue editor Edward Enninful and the entrepreneur Kendall Jenner, have passed through its coves. All those mentioned were in passing, but there are others that stayed, like Cayetana Fitz-James Stuart, the 18th Duchess of Alba. “My mother came to Ibiza for the first time with a couple of friends 45 years ago and she got stuck. A little after she found this site with views of the sea and built this rustic house, simple and charming, that reflected her soil”, Eugenia Martinez from Irujo tells Roig Askari as she shows her the villa she inherited from her mother after her death in 2014. What stands out in this house is a room full of ceramic figurines, tiny frames with paintings and photographs, stuffed animals, souvenirs and floral prints, all displayed on a plaster shelf that screams ‘horror vacui’. “I haven’t touched anything because for me it harbours her essence.” Similarly, the artist Miranda makaroff – whose work has been celebrated by Marina Abramović and Madonna – ,who arrived on the island in 2020 with her partner, the photographer and DJ Pascal Moscheni, to escape from the Covid-19 pandemic. The catalonian bought her house on a hill nad convierted it to a pop stadium of colours and shapes, with Barbie pink as the predominant colour on the doors, windows and decorative details. ‘One of my favourite houses in the book is Stefan Brüggemann’s; he brought a brutalist Mexican architect over and made a cement house and covered it in gold leaf. The contrast takes your breath away. Or the house of the bussinessman and ex-footballer Bobby Dekeyser, who has 40 alpacas in the house, as well as two horses, six donkeys, nine goats, eight goats, five dogs and 15 chickens. It’s like Noah’s Ark. My idea was to find 22 houses that represented the dream of each of the owners. Even though they are all very different, they have something in common; the owners, who come from all corners of the world, decided to build their paradise on this island. It is the case of Gimmo Etro, founder of the eponymous brand, who bought a 17th century palace in the Roman walls that fortified the Dalt Villa (declared a World Heritage Site by Unesco) and ended up making it his own. His son Jacopo keeps his father’s dream alive.”

The process of investigation of all these buildings has been a collaborative effort. “I already knew various owners before I began. Moreover, I counted on the complicity of those who know the island well: restaurant owners, event organizers … Ricardo also had his contacts and we also benefited from the infallible word of mouth. And, of course, the publishing house gave me their support, as well as that of (the photographer and film maker) Guido Vincenzini. Together with Ricardo, Gustavo Pereyra and Guido we formed a fantastic triumvirate and we managed to find truly unique houses”. Did you miss one? “Yes, the designer Jil Sander’s house”.

After touring the island from north to south, Roig Askari shows no signs of tiring of Ibiza. To the contrary, she enjoys her ‘holiday home’ to the fullest and continues to discover new corners. However, she had a new objective in mind: to find a house of lovers. ‘I always say to my husband that, when the kids are older and they have their own families to stay in the house, I would like to go with him to a fisherman’s house on Formentera. Facing the sea, with a bedroom, little kitchen and a fireplace for us to escape to from time to time.” Who knows if the experience will be the subject of another volume.