Blog post 59, 08-JUN 2025, Reijer Staats
Sharing heals!
"Friend, I missed something," texts a mate from The Hague after reading my last blog post. "I think it was the wine. This time I didn't feel the romance; it read more like a postcard. But I still love you." Suddenly Jaap appears in my mind – an old mentor, grey stubble on his face, kind eyes behind his therapeutic glasses. I hear his voice.
I spin an endless tale while Jaap silently pulls an imaginary thread between his fingers. "What's the common thread here?"
As I keep beating around the bush, Jaap picks up the thread again. He pulls it through an imaginary needle and moves it up and down his arm. "And who exactly are you trying to hoodwink?"
When I started sharing my confessions beyond our private talks and excitedly told Jaap about the responses, he said: "And that, Reijer, is the universality of the problem: sharing heals!"
Jaap's sayings... I could compile a little collection.
Koosje Veenendaal
For flamenco on Monday evenings, we naturally join friends Jacqueline and Edwin at Restaurante La Traviesa in Salobreña, who also took the photos above. We imagined a dinner show, had never been ourselves, but always recommend it to our guests, who are without exception positive. Sweat beads roll down the dancer's face, the red rose in her hair nearly falls out, and I'd love to stand up and tuck it back in. Perhaps it's her fiery gaze that stops me. How wonderful to experience this in such an intimate setting!
Sigh. Only that caricatured French-speaking table of sixty-somethings between us and the flamenco. The conversation carries on unabashedly. "Sssst," comes from the restaurant repeatedly.
Our main course disappears behind our teeth, the dancer takes a breather, I turn my chair, slide over and reconnect with my table companions. Some irritation here too, mostly about the dominant French woman at the corner. Johan clearly has an inner smile, probably having seen or heard something sparking an association or fantasy. Beaming, he passes his phone around the table; on screen a TV character from his youth, from the old days. "Well, now I really can't look at that person normally anymore!" he blurts out.
It's Koosje on screen, one of the sisters Jet and Koosje Veenendaal, characters from Van Kooten and De Bie. And yes indeed, there she is, right at the table next to us, with the same old-fashioned grey hairstyle: straight fringe and the rest pinned behind the ears. Flat glasses and broad teeth. Muscular, dominant, know-it-all and a bit too present, probably unaware of it herself.
During the segunda parte of the flamenco, Koosje is unintentionally captured in the foreground in a photo: how she swirls towards the flamenco to applaud generously, then immediately turns back to her plate. How she bites into her long teeth and how her raised, left-to-right moving index finger almost continuously demands attention from the staff and her tablemates.
Sometimes life is just a sketch. This evening with Koosje in the spotlight.
Duende
Wednesday evening, 9pm, Casa de la Cultura.
A second flamenco performance in a short time, with the same company.
Eloísa, the flamboyant former owner of our Casa Larimar and previously introduced in the Spanish talk Fernando, speaks about Pueblo Gitano (Gypsy people) and centuries of Spanish oppression.
The local flamenco school of Almuñécar appears in brightly coloured dresses and shows how 700 years ago foot was set on Spanish soil: a five-year-old dancer steals hearts at the start, the school principal shines in the lead role and the moving singing voice comes from a still-pubescent muchacho on a stool. In the background on stage, a few students move, clearly older newcomers from Northern Europe, a bit stiff, always just a little too slow and without the necessary flair. They keep catching my attention and often make me suppress a laugh. And then, at the end of the show by the exit, a young dancer with Down's syndrome spontaneously takes her moment with a solo and steals the show.
Ooohh. I feel a little cry inside, followed by the thought: so few men actually. Maybe something for me? After all, I'm still looking for a new hobby in Almuñécar.
Pueblo Gitano continues about forced conversion to Catholicism, about oppression and persecution. During the Holocaust many were deported to Auschwitz, and only recently has Spain recognised Roma culture as one of the foundations of Spanish culture. Perhaps it's this history that makes the OLÉS from the audience come as a release, like a shockwave through the hall: duende, a power, a struggle, from within and up from the soles of the feet, as poet Lorca so beautifully described.
It's not just history; the story is current. In the Netherlands people will go to the polls again in October to vote for tolerance. Jaap's Sharing heals remains relevant. I received many responses to my post about my mother. They soften what had become hard. And all our Spanish troubles over recent months, and there have been quite a few, have been reduced to mere sketches.
Hasta luego!
Johan & Reijer