Inside SQUARE, Europe’s anti-MIPIM escape in Ibiza

Running a high-level real estate conference in Ibiza was not an obvious move for José María Pons. But his decision to leave behind two decades in the exhibition business and build something entirely different was less a leap of faith than a logical conclusion. SQUARE is now thought of by many industry titans as the “anti-MIPIM” – an exclusive, private event set in Ibiza. Visitors can swap the chaos of the Croisette for the Spanish island’s ley lines. And given the current macro, many in sector will relish Ibiza’s believed invisible sacred lines of energy.

After 20 years running Barcelona Meeting Point, Spain’s premier real estate event through the boom years of the late 1990s and early 2000s, Pons had seen enough of exhibition stands, cardboard lunches and carefully managed messaging to know what the industry needed instead.

Speaking on this week’s PropCast, Pons explains how SQUARE was built, why exclusivity and atmosphere matter more than floorspace and what the biggest issues facing real estate investors will be when delegates gather in Ibiza at the end of May.

Pons began his career in events at the intersection of two transformative moments for Barcelona: the 1992 Olympic Games and the decade of inward investment that followed. “The Olympics changed everything and put Barcelona on the map,” he says. “The local, regional and Spanish governments were favouring foreign investment. There were plenty of tailwinds.”

Barcelona Meeting Point became a fixture for European real estate capital throughout the late 1990s and 2000s. But as the global financial crisis hit in 2008, alongside the beginning of technology eroding the logic of traditional exhibitions, the model came under strain. By 2017, Pons had decided it was time to move on. “I got enough of it,” he says. “I had been doing that for 20 years. I thought there was no such big reason for an exhibition anymore.”

The question was what to replace it with. Pons believed in the conference format but was clear that simply replicating what already existed would leave no room for something new. He felt the answer was to make the product different in almost every respect: different location, different format, different atmosphere all supported by a firm commitment to keeping it small.

SQUARE takes place in Ibiza and caps attendance at around 150 people. Delegates include senior figures from across the global real estate industry, with Chatham House rules applying as a baseline. Ther is also an explicit understanding that nothing said inside the room is to be reported elsewhere. “People feel that they are among equals,” Pons says. “They don’t feel constrained. They’re not afraid that what they say can be reported.”

The effect on the quality of conversation is, by most accounts, significant. “I found that despite having the top, top people there, from Nuveen, to CBRE, to BlackRock, the honesty was probably over 80 per cent,” says our host Andy, who has chaired panels at the event. “That’s rare.”

Pons is candid about the role that environment plays in achieving that. The food is deliberately good: a pointed rejection of what he describes as the standard conference experience of “cardboard and chips, maybe some sort of terrible curry that’s come straight out of a plastic box.” Sessions have been held outdoors by the water. The island itself, he argues, does part of the work. “Once you get there, you get in a good mood. You feel relaxed, you feel at ease. Ultimately, that spirit really affects those attending.”

The format reinforces this. Rather than panels broadcasting at passive audiences, SQUARE sessions are run in small, intimate rooms where senior figures in the audience are expected to contribute. Skilled moderators draw out the floor rather than simply managing the stage. “Shyness is not there,” Pons says. “Nobody feels shy.”

For the May 2026 edition, the agenda reflects what Pons is hearing from senior investors across Europe: a market that is cautious, uncertain and looking for orientation on two issues above all others.

The first is geopolitics and the risk of war. Pons draws a direct line between military uncertainty and investment paralysis. “There is something that is refraining people from going ahead,” he says. “It goes beyond geopolitics. There is a fear of war.” To address this directly, SQUARE has secured Admiral Rob Bauer, until a year ago the chair of NATO’s Military Committee, to speak at the event. “If somebody can tell us how worried we should be, it could be Admiral Bauer.”

The second is data centres and the infrastructure demands of artificial intelligence. On this front Pons has assembled what he describes as a world-class panel: Andy Power, president and CEO of Digital Realty, the world’s largest data centre platform; Ismael Clemente, the largest developer of data centres in Spain; and the head of NVIDIA in Europe. “The more AI, the more computing needs, the more need for data centres,” Pons says. “If we really want to know how far AI can go, we’re going to have there the number one guy for NVIDIA in Europe.”

These two themes are not unconnected. Pons notes that logistics investors are already seeing significant demand driven by defence spending: from facilities in Munich to land positions in Poland, where major construction materials businesses are acquiring sites in anticipation of a post-conflict rebuild. “That’s the positive side of this war threat,” he says. “But for others, because of the fear of interest rates going up, they are refraining from going ahead.”

Pons is also willing to name the domestic political obstacles to investment where he sees them. As a Catalan, he is forthright about the damage done by the regional government’s rent controls in Barcelona, which he compares to the impact of similar policies in Scotland and the Netherlands. “If you want to buy a built-to-rent building and your rents are going to be controlled by the regional government, that changes many things,” he says. Madrid, by contrast, benefits from a pro-business regional administration and has become the default destination for European real estate capital flowing into Spain. “Madrid definitely leads everything in Spain currently.”

Beyond the Spanish residential market, Pons sees continued growth across hospitality, particularly in the Canary Islands, the Balearic Islands and Madrid itself. This is accompanied by growth in urban logistics and purpose-built student accommodation, both still at a relatively early stage compared with northern Europe.

But it is the culture of SQUARE itself, as much as any single topic, that Pons returns to when asked what makes the event worth attending. He is proud that the conference has given a platform to contrarians as well as mainstreamers including, memorably, a session in which an adviser to the EU’s foreign minister and an outspoken defender of Russia shared a stage. “Democracy is the freedom to offend,” as Teacher puts it. Pons does not shy away from the description that one speaker once offered him: “The house of free speech in property.” “On a way, it’s true,” he says. “We give voice to both. And we are proud of that.”

SQUARE takes place in Ibiza in late May 2026. 

Author’s note: This episode was recorded in February, prior to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.