In 1956, when I was in my early twenties, I suffered a lot from asthma in cold, wet Amsterdam. Someone said to me 'Why don't you go to Spain for a while, the air is drier there. For example, to Altea, I know a Dutchman who lives there.'

I took the train, another train and another, and finally arrived one December afternoon in Altea, a small village on the coast. The sun was shining, I saw the pebble beach, took off my shoes and jumped into the sea.

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Then I went looking for that Dutchman, he was in a café and immediately arranged a place for me to live. Well, a place to live, it was a goat shed on the beach, the goats downstairs and me upstairs. I paid 30 guilders a month, cleaning included. I had never been to Spain before and realized that I was in a different world here, compared to what I knew from the Netherlands, France and Scotland. I was immediately fascinated by what I saw around me, the village and the surrounding area. Looking back, I can only describe it as 'graphic' because of the clean lines and the deep black and white. In the village I saw the people dressed in black and the houses that were completely white, with paint peeling from the walls. The shape of the houses and buildings, with those square surfaces and the shadows cast by the bright light, was a bit cubist. I thought it was astonishingly beautiful.

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When I walked through the village there was always a door open somewhere. The space I saw was often almost empty. There were perhaps two chairs, there was a niche in the wall with a mariposa, a bowl with a wick in oil that gave a faint light. And somewhere in the back was a table. That style and simplicity was new and special to me.

Before I left Amsterdam, I had received a camera as a farewell gift, a 'Flexaret' that you looked into from above and saw an image measuring six by six centimeters. I had never used the camera before. When I saw these people, the houses and streets I thought 'I want to take pictures here'. In the meantime, I learned Spanish by walking to the San Roque neighbourhood and trying to talk to women who were sweeping the patio or hanging out the laundry. I had learned a phrase, like “What do you call that in Spanish?”, and I would point at something. When they said it and I repeated it, I always made them laugh. That's how I learned the language. Or I went out to take pictures. I walked with my Flexaret along the streets and squares and searched for scenes, for the ‘right’ position and proportion. I saw the white-black of the sun-shadow, where a villager was just standing. Or wicker chairs hanging to dry on the wall, a meter above the ground. Or a white beach with only a man on a chair playing the guitar in the full sun.

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There was so much to see, and it was so different from what I knew from Amsterdam. I could look endlessly at the ‘black’ figures moving past the houses. Yes, they were almost always in black. Why? They were in mourning. Everyone over the age of forty had experienced a death in their circle. So, from then on you had to wear black clothes. After someone had died you immediately dipped your clothes in the dye bath. Especially older women, for whom the rules were even stricter, wore only black.

 

Anyone in Altea who wanted a photo or portrait went to the photo shop of Coello brothers, Pepe and Francisco. My approach was unknown. I was a street photographer, looking for unexpected moments. Something can always happen on the street. I saw people leaning out of the window, talking to each other. I saw women and men harvesting the carob pods, which are the fruits of the carob tree, by beating the branches with long bamboo poles.

In the village, most of the streets were still unpaved. People moved around on foot; the transport of goods was done by mule or

donkey. In the part of the village where I often was, San Roque, there were hardly any shops. Every now and then an old truck came with barrels of olive oil on it, from which you could have your carafes filled. The eyeglasses man, who wore a short jacket, came regularly. When he threw open the flaps of his jacket, you saw a lot of glasses in bags. The women of San Roque gathered around him and tried out the glasses, they all had a different strength. Some were half broken and held together with tape. The knife peddler had a jacket just like that, full of sharp knives.

The winegrower also came by, and you could fill up carafes of eight or sixteen liters from the large barrels on his truck. Unfortunately,his drink was quite bad; it always gave me a blue tongue.

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I was friends with Adolfo, a singer with a guitar who could play a bit of flamenco but couldn't sing. He sounded like a sick duck. Still, he earned some money, just enough to live in a truck. That was his house. He emerged from the cabin every day perfectly dressed. With a neat jacket, tight pants, yellow socks and sharp black pointed shoes, ready to perform.

Except for Adolfo, the men usually didn't wear shoes. In the countryside, the campo, they walked in espadrilles, made of jute and cloth and a piece of old car tire as a sole. Indestructible. And if they did wear out, you could have them repaired by the shoemaker. They were the classic Spanish espadrilles; you can already see them in paintings by Goya. I wore those espadrilles too.

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I did everything that was ‘Spanish’: eating a lot of garlic, in the aioli for example, and not using a regular lighter but a ‘mechero’, a prepared piece of wick that could withstand the wind well. You lit the wick with a spark from a lighter, which made the mechero smolder and you could light a whole round of cigarettes.

From Altea I travelled a lot through other parts of the country. That’s how I became intertwined with Spanish life. I came every year in the winter, when the asthma season started for me in the Netherlands and left again when it got too hot in the summer. I kept taking photos. First with the Flexaret, later with a Nikon, then the iPhone. And that’s how I still do it. Almost seventy years now.

Amsterdam, 2025

Recorded by Hester Carvalho