On the rock face above them a series of legends, gobbets of feel-good hippie wisdom, had been written in paint. The group has overhauled the house and its grounds, drawing on a deep knowledge of the area’s traditional architecture. Raising my eyes along the horizon, I saw a sweep of dull identikit rooftops – the coastal suburbs of ‘San An’ – and, through a gap between the buildings, an enticing slice of blue sea.

On the night I was there, drinking cold fino sherry and nibbling burrata with olives and juicy figs, the soundtrack was a Brazilian guitarist playing soft bossa nova. Back in the day, the sleepy hamlet of San Lorenzo had a single bar, the Casanova, where country folk went to smoke cheroots and play cards. And with Hilton’s Curio Collection no longer running the show, the Experimental Group has taken over, opening a recharged restaurant designed by Dorothée Meilichzon this summer and bedrooms next year.

As an indication of just how far it is from blaring techno around the pool, there are plans to host a classical music event here next year. La Torre is not the only delicious makeover of a tired hostel – look at Los Enamorados in Portinatx, the delightful waterside bolthole curated by design freaks Pierre Traversier and Rozemarijn de Witte. A moratorium by the Balearic government has halted the construction of new hotels on non-urban land, essentially forcing would-be developers to revamp old ones. It reminded me that even as one generation moans about how much more magical and idyllic Ibiza was in their day, successive generations are already finding new sources of magic and idyll.

Or a smart seaside hotspot such as Beachouse at the scrappy end of Playa d’en Bossa, where the large Ushuaïa and Hard Rock Hotels fizzle out into overgrown waste ground and car parks. In front of this impromptu shrine, a bearded fellow in the lotus position was doing something with a rolling paper. Take Oku, which recently opened on the edge of San Antonio, a rebranding of the Casa Cook hotel that had its soft launch in 2019 and then closed. The building creeps up the crag, imitating the dun-coloured tones of the surrounding stone; the bamboo shades over the terraces are a visual reference to the boat sheds huddling in the rocky calas along the water’s edge.Today the space, renamed El Silencio by its new French owners, has morphed into a sand-on-the-floor seaside restaurant with gorgeous wabi-sabi-like styling, a pool out back and a menu by young-gun chef Jean Imbert, known as the Jamie Oliver of France. Meanwhile, the island continues to evolve, even if old-timers such as me sometimes have a hard time adjusting to the new realities. I went there for dinner one evening with Serena Cook who, after almost 20 years at the helm of Ibiza’s most creative concierge business, has her finger firmly on the island’s pulse, can always get the best tables and is the keyholder to some of the most special villas around.

As such, it’s a perfect illustration of a tendency – one that has come to the fore as the island rakes over its recent past – to see what can be retrieved, reassessed, and if at all possible, recycled.The great dome of Privilege up on the heights of San Rafael looked forlorn and unkempt, the encroaching vegetation making it appear like a Mayan ruin in the early stages of being reclaimed by the jungle. A 300-year-old casa payesa in the classic ibicenco style, this gorgeous San Lorenzo property had stood abandoned for 80 years before its exemplary six-year restoration job. The design ditches the all-white aesthetic traditionally synonymous with Ibiza in favour of earthy, neutral tones, stone, linen and acres of grey concrete. Watching the sunset from the clifftop terraza at Hostal La Torre – a key spot for frustrated dance-music lovers during the lockdown period – I smiled to remember a party here during the naughty 1990s, when sleeping pills were distributed under another guise and the sun rose to reveal a landscape littered with snoring bodies. Further round the west coast, I stopped for a dip at the pretty cove of Cala Moli, just down the road from the splashy private community Sabina Estates.

Here, the reinvention effort was a labour of love, taking an Eighties, plain-Jane family hotel to the next level with a total overhaul, a fine, Italian-inflected restaurant in La Mesa Escondida, wonderful gardens and rooftop tables for soaking up the extraordinary panorama. She also knows about the loveliest new hotels, especially those low-key ones that open their doors quietly. As I traversed the island, I found plenty to confound my expectations as well as stir up long-dormant memories.Few places on the planet have undergone changes as sweeping, as transformative, both for good and ill, as Ibiza.