A practical guide to obtaining public-space and street-filming permits across Ibiza’s five ayuntamientos — with honest timelines, document checklists and the exceptions (Dalt Vila, summer season, road closures) that catch productions out.
Any filming, photo reportage or promotional video shot in a public space on Ibiza — a plaza, a street, a promenade, a village square — needs a licence from the ayuntamiento of that municipality. There are five: Eivissa, Santa Eulà ria des Riu, Sant Antoni de Portmany, Sant Josep de sa Talaia and Sant Joan de Labritja. Each has its own form, its own inbox and its own minimum notice.
This guide covers what street permits include (public-space occupation, pedestrian management, basic load-in), what they don’t (beach shoots, drones, road closures — those are separate files), and the practical runway you need from first email to filming day. For shoots on insular roads or requiring Guardia Civil traffic management, the Consell Insular d’Eivissa and Guardia Civil Tráfico get involved on top.
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Two-to-five person crews with handheld or tripod, no road impact, no generator. Still requires a filming licence from the local ayuntamiento but the application is light and the fee sits at the municipal minimum — around €4.50 per day in Eivissa.
Ibiza photo shoot locations →Camera carts, monitor village, a small wardrobe tent. Expect a detailed shooting plan, civil liability insurance (RC), a square-metre occupation calc, and 7–10 working days runway. Some municipalities request a pre-shoot walkthrough with the technical office.
Ibiza film production locations →
Feature units, multiple trucks, generator, lighting rig, pedestrian diversion or rolling road closure. Three concurrent files: municipal permit + Consell Insular (if insular road) + Guardia Civil Tráfico for traffic management — budget 15–25 working days minimum.
Full permit help →Boundaries aren’t obvious. A plaza two blocks apart can sit in Eivissa or Santa Eulà ria. Filing with the wrong one loses you a week. We confirm jurisdiction before the dossier goes in.
Forms must be in Spanish or Catalan. Insurance certificates in English get kicked back. We translate the shooting plan, the crew list and the liability certificate into the format each registro actually accepts.
Eivissa blocks commercial filming in Dalt Vila and Es Soto streets from 1 May to 14 October — with narrow exceptions. We flag this on day one and re-route the shot list before you build a schedule around it.
We signpost the RC coverage levels local technical offices accept for public-space shoots — typically €300,000–€600,000 — and liaise with your broker so the certificate is on the dossier, not chasing it.
Insular roads need Guardia Civil Tráfico on the day, and they invoice separately. We brief the kilometre range, the window, the closure type (rolling / hard) and make sure the production budget reflects their fee.
A shoot that touches Eivissa, Sant Josep and Santa Eulà ria in the same week means three parallel applications, three chase emails, three fee payments. We centralise it so you track one calendar, not three.
Ibiza is administratively divided into five ayuntamientos, each with independent filming-permit procedures. Eivissa (Ibiza town) has the densest process — detailed project memorandum, RC insurance, occupation calculation in m², economic-impact statement. Santa Eulà ria des Riu requires a full application with locations, dates and road-occupation details. Sant Antoni de Portmany asks for a minimum of ten business days’ notice via email to ajuntament@santantoni.net or delivered in person at Passeig de la Mar 16. Sant Josep de sa Talaia runs its own film-commission-adjacent process, also at ten business days. Sant Joan de Labritja is the smallest administration and the most case-by-case. Knowing which boundary you’re standing on — particularly in the Ibiza/Santa Eulà ria periphery around Talamanca and Jesús — is the first thing to get right.
A municipal street-permit dossier typically contains: (1) a detailed project memorandum describing the production, crew size, equipment, scenes and exact locations; (2) a civil liability (RC) insurance certificate — most offices accept €300,000–€600,000 coverage for standard work, higher for generator or rigging; (3) a shot list with hour-by-hour schedule; (4) a crew list with passport/DNI numbers; (5) a detailed square-metre calculation for public-space occupation; (6) image-release and location-release drafts if talent or private façades appear. Fees in Eivissa start at €0.45 per m² per day, with a €4.50 daily minimum. Incomplete dossiers don’t get rejected so much as frozen — which is worse, because clock keeps running while you scramble.
Baseline lead times: seven working days for Eivissa, ten working days for Sant Antoni and Sant Josep, and seven-to-ten for the others. These are minimums — peak season adds days, and technical-office holidays (Easter, August) add more. The hardest constraint is Eivissa’s summer rule: from 1 June to 30 September the ayuntamiento applies strict limits on shoots and works to protect the tourist season, and from 1 May to 14 October commercial filming in the streets of Dalt Vila and Es Soto is not authorised — with narrow exceptions for public-entity productions. Any shoot brief that centres Dalt Vila needs to either fall outside that window, or be reshaped. We flag it before the schedule is built.
Dalt Vila has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1999, which adds a preservation layer on top of the municipal permit and drives the summer restriction above. Sound rules typically cut generators and amplified audio at 22:00 or 23:00 depending on the municipality. Drones over streets are not covered by a street permit: Ibiza airspace is controlled, and legal drone work requires AESA authorisation plus AENA/ENAIRE/Ferronats coordination on a ~20-working-day runway. Road closures on insular roads (managed by the Consell Insular d’Eivissa) need a separate file plus Guardia Civil Tráfico involvement — you brief the exact kilometre, the window and the closure type, and you pay for their time. Hard closures on main arteries are rarely granted in July–August; rolling closures with their cooperation are more realistic.
If you know the dates, the exact streets, the crew size and whether you need any closures or amplified sound, we can come back within 24 hours with a realistic permit calendar — which ayuntamiento owns the file, how many working days it actually takes in that window, what the fees will be, and where Dalt Vila, summer restrictions or Guardia Civil involvement force a rethink. First conversation is no-obligation; the fee only applies if you engage us to file and chase the stack.
Seven working days for Eivissa (Ibiza town), ten working days for Sant Antoni and Sant Josep, and roughly seven-to-ten days for Santa Eulà ria and Sant Joan. Those are minimums — in peak tourist season (July–August) and around public holidays, expect the real-world window to stretch by a few days. If your brief includes a road closure or the Consell Insular, plan on 15–25 working days total.
There is no single legislated number published by every municipality, but in practice technical offices accept RC (Responsabilidad Civil) coverage in the €300,000–€600,000 range for standard public-space shoots. Larger productions with generators, rigging, pyrotechnics or road closures are routinely asked to bring higher coverage. The certificate must name the production entity and cover the shoot dates; English-only certificates are frequently kicked back, so have it ready in Spanish or bilingual format.
No — a municipal filming permit does not cover aerial work. All Ibiza airspace from ground up is classified as controlled, and legal drone filming requires AESA (Spain’s air-safety agency) authorisation with AENA/ENAIRE and Ferronats coordination, on a roughly 20-working-day runway. The street permit and the drone permit are two separate files that need to be filed in parallel, and the drone authorisation is the slower of the two.
Variable — there is no flat fee. Costs sit in three places: (1) the municipal or Consell Insular occupation fee, (2) the Guardia Civil Tráfico time for the officers managing the closure, invoiced separately at their tariff, and (3) your own traffic-management crew and signage, which you are expected to supply. Rolling closures on secondary roads are cheaper and more often granted than hard closures on main arteries — and in peak season, hard closures are rarely approved at all.
Technically every public-space shoot needs a licence regardless of size. Practically, a two-to-five person crew with minimal kit sits at the municipal minimum fee and a light dossier. Five-to-fifteen people with a camera cart triggers the full detailed dossier — shooting plan, m² calc, RC insurance. Fifteen-plus, or any production with a truck, generator or closure, triggers a bigger file plus Consell Insular and Guardia Civil involvement. There isn’t a hard numeric line; it’s about street impact.
Usually no. The Ajuntament d’Eivissa does not authorise public-space occupation for photo reportage or promotional filming in the streets of Dalt Vila and Es Soto from 1 May to 14 October, with narrow exceptions for productions promoted by public bodies or for duly justified exceptional cases. Outside that window (mid-October to end of April) the standard permit process applies, with UNESCO-heritage care. If Dalt Vila is essential in July or August, the honest answer is usually a rescope.
It happens — usually because the dossier was incomplete, a boundary was misassigned, or the summer/heritage rule wasn’t flagged. The realistic protocol is: (1) identify whether the file was rejected or just frozen pending documents, (2) if fixable in-window, resubmit with the missing pieces and a written clarifying note, (3) if not, re-route the shot list to a nearby municipality where the file is still fileable. Filming without a granted permit is not a path — fines are material and can follow the production company home.
