Claire Manumission has written a memoir, The Motel: High Times in ‘90s Ibiza

A new memoir, The Motel: High Times in ‘90s Ibiza, is set to be published by Unbound.

Iconic club promoter Claire Manumission, who ran the legendary Ibiza Manumission parties alongside her partner Mike at Privilege, has penned a memoir that provides a “a darkly humorous look at hedonism in drug-kissed ’90s Ibiza”.

“Over its 14-year history, over 1.5 million people attended Manumission in Ibiza,” A press release reads. “It was the biggest weekly party in the world earning it a place in the Guinness World Records. In 1998 with Manumission going into its 5thyear, Mike and Claire decided to take over an abandoned brothel on the outskirts of Ibiza town and turn it into a 24-hour party destination – The Motel. 

“Under the neon glare of a sign that promised Bar, Bed and Breakfast for one lost summer, this doll’s house on acid became home to a wild menagerie of DJ’s, supermodels, international pop stars, bestselling writers, New York strippers and ask no questions drug dealers – the whole of Bohemia was there.”

Speaking about the book, Claire Manumission said: “The story draws from all my years in Ibiza, weaves back and forward through time: from the carefree early days when I met and fell in love with Mike – on his quest for universal freedom – how together we transformed Manumission into the biggest weekly party in the world.

“The sex shows, the controversy, betrayals and finally the abolition of Manumission but it’s told predominantly from The Motel, on the long wild weekend of my 24th birthday – the weekend when Norman Cook met Zoe Ball and Lisa I’Anson missed her Radio 1 broadcast and was subsequently very publicly fired on the BBC News at Six. The Motel is a darkly humorous look at hedonism in drug-kissed 90s Ibiza.”

“This is the story of the Motel – but also it is the story of the 1990s when for a few brief years a generation decided to throw off the shackles of the past and ‘be free to do what it wanted to do’.”

The book is currently 55% funded, with a number of reward donation tiers ranging from £25 to have your name printed in The Motel: High Times in ‘90s Ibiza, to a whopping £10,000 to have a dedicated page, nickname, and inclusions in some of The Motel’s wildest stories.

You can donate to the fundraiser for The Motel: High Times in ‘90s Ibiza here.

(Photo: La Prohibida at Manumission 1996 by Josean)