SECRETS OF THE MANUMISSION MOTEL SET & HOW IT´S BEING RE-MADE ONSTAGE AT 528 IBIZA

Part of the old motel’s charm was its secrecy – there were no Manumission signs on the facade of the American style architecture, rarely seen in ibiza and reminiscent of a giant pink doll’s house

Special feature – Words by Charlotte Knight

Ibiza PJ takes an exclusive look at the seven-day renovation of a roadside brothel into the Manumission Motel in the summer of 1998, ahead of its highly anticipated recreation onstage at 528’s party of the decade.

Normally, when people acquire a hotel or motel, they do so with the fairly conventional intention of running one. Mike and Claire, however, were never interested in doing things in the traditional sense. When they took over a pink roadside motel in Ibiza 28 years ago, it wasn’t because they had dreams of becoming hoteliers – it was fueled by a sexual thriller called “Murder at the Manumission Motel” written by Claire Davies – who adopted the stage and host name Claire Manumission.  

Alongside her husband, Mike Manumission, and his brother Andy McKay who is owner of Ibiza Rocks, CEO of Pikes Ibiza, and co-founder and CEO of 528 Ibiza — the trio had founded Manumission: a mix of clubbing and theatre born in Manchester and transformed into an Ibiza legend. It was a rare, sexually charged spectacle the world had never seen before. There was only one problem with that particular Monday script: one important detail was missing – the motel.

Like every show the British family produced, complete with drag queens, live sex shows, acrobats, showmen on stilts and mask-wearing dancers in their knickers, authenticity was important and it should be as mind-blowing as possible. So, in true Manumission fashion — spontaneous, unconventional, and with a non-conformist entourage in tow— they didn’t change the story; they quickly got their hands on the first motel they could find, which ironically, was already a fully-fledged sexually charged spot in a closed down brothel, with an American style of motel architecture that Claire immediately fell in love with.

A care-free, young Claire Davies wearing a stunning backless gown and heels with Mike McKay her partner in crime, beside Engleburt Humperdink´s pink convertible Rolls Royce in Ibiza

It seemed like fate had intervened. What played out was like a circus trick or something out of the movies — and in many ways, it was. The lines between fiction and reality were already beginning to blur. The fixation of wanting to find a motel within seven days to bring her script to life became too much for Claire and a touch of madness took over  “Let’s break into the Motel and show everyone just how cool it is inside,” she says reflecting in her book. She has since spent many years piecing the history back together for her uncensored memoir, The Motel: High Times in 90s Ibiza.

The glowing pink building at the Jesús crossroads in Ibiza was the answer to her prayers: “The Motel stood on el cruce de Jesus – wow, what an address. The cross of Jesus. It should have been a warning, but at the time it felt like a miracle!”. The couple eventually became key holders to the former Motel-Hotel Pereyra Internacional, which had been turned into a secret brothel before they found and renovated it. Its transformation is a story of humour, determination and a heavy dose of Ibiza magic.

One of the most notable interior architectural features they uncovered at the motel, was that many of the bedrooms came with 90´s pimp style water beds, sound-proofed doors and white padded PVC walls. Many of those elements would live on in the Manumission Motel, but in a way that seemed strangely refreshing compared to its sordid past, and taking into account their grand vision for the already cult-status event.

A look back an old photograph of Room 10 at the Manumission Motel before its makeover. With two built-in water beds and a sunken bathtub, it became Mike and Claire Manumissions “Party Room.” [Copyright The Motel, by Claire Davies]

Manumission sold out to 10, 000 partygoers every Monday at KU and Privilege for five years before growing into a 14-year extravaganza. During its heyday, some of the shows were under the design eye of Mark Fisher, the celebrated architect and stage designer behind sets for Pink Floyd, U2, The Rolling Stones and Madonna. Mike and Claire were young at the time, but they were driven, working on grand-scale productions to extremely high standards and helping create one of Ibiza’s most beloved club nights of all time.

In honour of Manumission’s return at 528, Ibiza PJ draws on Claire’s book to explore the design decisions behind a renovation that turned the motel into a set for wild after-parties frequented by superstars from around the globe. The surreal environment helped gain its reputation as one of the world’s wildest hotels during the short-lived six months or so it was open. The motel was fictional in one dimension, but raw and real in another. The highly creative couple designed not only the Manumission set, but also the Carry-On party at Space Ibiza. “Mike and I took full responsibility for the musical programming, concept, artwork, promotion and decoration of Carry On.” Claire reveals in her book.

From the exterior, the pink painted, multi-level building looked like a life-sized doll’s house with its rows of windows offering glimpses into the story unfolding inside. Each room became its own miniature theatrical set, allowing guests to move through the building and peer into the action from dusk until dawn. It was nothing like a conventional motel. It became an immersive set that guests could enter and inhabit (with very little sleep), complete with a neon sign outside, ¨Bar, Bed, Breakfast¨ with its unmistakably American feel. Claire and Mike loved America and spent winters living in New York. Of the derelict building, Claire wrote: “The only real piece of Americana they could find in Ibiza,”.

A look back in history – the banned Manumission the Movie campaign – [copyright The Motel by Claire Davies]

Room by room, the motel’s previous life revealed itself. The first priority was clear: “scrub the building from top to bottom.” In the central room on the ground floor, they found the original, prominent square Ibicencan bar, finished in white. They removed it because, as Claire put it, “it didnt fit with the Americana exterior”. The main characters in Claire’s sexual thriller were the Pink Pussies, a group of strippers from New York City. She wanted to give them the perfect setting: “The whole room was transformed to make you feel like you had slipped inside a beautiful, curved and very pink vulva” she reveals in her memoir.

Although Mike who was “a great admirer of cultural provocateur Hugh Hefner” had studied architecture at The Bartlett School of Architecture in London, the couple chose to hire an architect and his team of builders to execute the motel’s erotic design. A pole was installed for Otter, one of the world’s most famous sex performers, while the Pink Pussy room with its show-stopping appeal was marked out in shades of pink and crimson.

“He ran around the room with a spray can, drawing out the folds of the vagina, which his builders would construct¨, says Claire. A carpenter sculpted wood into a dripping form, perhaps suggesting blood and echoing the fictional murder plot. The bar and stage were finished in deep red, matching the thriller’s story of a victim entering the Pink Pussy room, being entertained by the strippers, then murdered and engulfed inside.

During the renovation of the Manumission Motel, The graffiti artist asked Claire if there was any inspiration for the pieces they would paint in the hallway. [copyright The Motel, by Claire Davies]

The fact that the space had previously been a brothel was hardly a drawback. If anything, it worked in their favour. They repurposed what was already there, including built-in waterbeds which added another layer of 90s decadence, their slow, shifting movement perfectly suited to the Motel’s deliberately provocative interiors. The neon-pink LED lighting around the corridors would remain to accentuate the artwork they added on top of the dirty white walls. Two of the UK’s most prolific graffiti artists, Elk and Petro, flew to the island especially for the job with “bags stuffed with 200 cans of Krylon paint in rich burgundies, ochres and pinks ¨that was what the walls needed – art, street art, to tell the story”.

Claire and Mike drew on classic New York graffiti. Elsewhere, the corridors were painted in two shades of pink: “bubble-gum below the gold horizontal rail and baby above¨. The words “STOP IT” was sprayed on the walls alongside a pair of sexy female legs, a nod to the antics that were bound to happen. The raw, gritty spaces were juxtaposed with luxurious soft furnishings supplied by high-end designer John Broekman, who is now the founder of Ibiza based property consultancy The Blue Pearl. 

Upstairs, bedroom doors contained layers of lead and white PVC padding on the walls to soundproof the thumping music. Even back then, DJ Carl Cox was big enough to warrant having his own bedroom, leading off the freshly graffiti-painted corridors and complete with his own waterbed. From the large rooftop the views stretched across the mountains and the distant sea towards the ancient walls of Dalt Vila. Claire and Mike added bright green artificial grass to create a type of a shantytown experience with seating area designed for fun and frolics. It became a space for “swinging hammocks for smoking joints and reclining under the stars, and bespoke bamboo huts for friends and lovers, with straw blinds which could be pulled down or miniature doors that could be closed for a bit of privacy”.

Backstage at Manumission in 1995 with founder and director Mike Manumission and the characters of the performance [photograph by Josean Oyaga]

The ambitious couple loved elevating the derelict mess into something sexy, cool, arty and theatrical. They glamorised sex in a way that felt new and unexpected. Prostitutes were replaced by professional Pink Pussy strippers, who had already been performing at Manumission every Monday for around five years. Claire recalls, “Mike and I lived in Ibiza in the summer and New York in the winter. There was a great connection between the vibrant 90s gay scene in Ibiza and the New York clubbing underground. We merged those two worlds under the roof of the Manumission Motel”.

Claire also compared their design style to two other famous hotels. “The Motel’s renovation was inspired by the Titty Twister, the vampire-ridden strip club in From Dusk till Dawn and the Chelsea Hotel¨. Secrecy was an element of the Manumission Motel too – press were not allowed and only a select few in the know, close friends and celebrities would turn up at the door. Claire described the final look of the Manumission Motel as “a doll’s house on acid¨. Upon arrival, guests were greeted by a dwarf beside a doormat bearing the words “Welcome, Scratch & Sniff 3 Times To Enter¨.

During its time, thanks to it being designed as a private hideout away from the paparazzi and the public, the Manumission Motel welcomed a remarkable roll call of superstars and 1990s supermodels: from Claire’s close friend Jade Jagger, Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell, Claudia Schiffer, Elle McPherson and Linda Evangelista. They partied to the tunes played by DJ´s Carl Cox, Pete Tong, Roger Sanchez, Fatboy Slim and the list goes on.

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Manumission Summer of 1998 – A Re-creation at 528 Ibiza in 2026

The Manumission Motel is miraculously being recreated as one of five immersive worlds at 528 Ibiza, each with its own stage design, in a festival-style ode to the legendary party on Saturday 26th September. The founders, Claire, Mike and Andy, could never have imagined that the Motel would reappear decades later as a pop-up production at Mike’s brother Andy McKay’s Ibiza venue 528, which is set across a sprawling 50,000 m2 estate in the Benimussa hills with amphitheatre and indoor club.

This Saturday, the party will be soundtracked by a host of DJs, including David Morales and Carl Craig — with the rest remaining top secret. At the heart of it all is the Manumission Motel, with its elaborate set and stage design in collaboration with the creative team behind Glastonbury’s Shangri-La and Boomtown Festival. Beyond it, other stages become home to Hellfire in the Hong Kong Hot Tub, Bedroom Bondage à la Japonaise, Le Théâtre Pink Pussy and Roger Moore’s Dark Room.

The site map of the recreation of Manumission and its layout with not one, but five different stages at 528 is revealed.

Thousands of Ibiza lovers born in the 1970´s will be thrown back to precisely the summer of 1998, with hair crimpers and Adidas at the ready (the dress code is 90´s attire with a mask for after sunset), while a new generation will be immersed in the Ibiza of the past – to most likely feel shocked when they see what it was like..

At the height of Manumission, it was during an era when Nokia phones were popular, smoking in clubs was allowed and social media didn’t exist. Manumission Mondays were heard of through finely designed, hand-delivered flyers and a palpable sense of anticipation, as parades of Manumission girls and crew, dressed in I Love Manumission T-shirts and carrying promotional signs, brought their wild energy and sense of adventure to the beaches and streets.

British choreographer Jodie Blemmings leads the dance and performance, joined by ballet-trained dancer Paris Fitzpatrick and a cast of London’s dance talent, creating a sophisticated, dynamic production where choreography and theatrical design are intrinsically intertwined. As with the original, the Manumission Motel interior is finished in red, this time in a vivid scarlet.

A philosophy of freedom: Mike McKay described Manumission’s ethos in Claire’s book: “Everyone in life is a bit of a slave, but once you are at Manumission, you are free to do whatever you want to do, as long as you don’t harm anybody else.”

The night will recall the legendary post–Paris Fashion Week party hosted by Mike and Claire at Le Palace in Paris, when Kate Moss, Helena Christensen and Naomi Campbell famously danced on the tables. For the remake taking place at 528 Ibiza, the real 90´s supermodels have been traded for Barcelona’s drag queens who will portray Claudia Snipper, Yasmin Le Bon Bon, Naomi Cowbell and the deliciously decadent Cake Moss.

The Manumission comeback, that everybody is thrilled about, covers a full weekend of celebrations called ¨Le Weekend¨ also at Pikes Ibiza and Ibiza Rocks Bar, giving a rare glimpse into one of the most influential movements in the island’s history. The founders say in their press release “Creating Manumission for and with the next generation is a lucid dream come true“.

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The Book By Claire Manumission