Bee Pointer I saw Jeanette Lohuis standing on her bone-dry plot of land in Spain. Total area 13,000 square meters. With some bushes here and there, near Valencia, near beautiful nature and a charming village. She pointed to the left and she pointed to the right, this owner of the webshop AutonoomTotaal.nl. “There will be twenty wooden houses here,” she said. This will soon become the center of the autonomous community. Large vegetable garden there. That’s all it takes to “live happily together.”
A complete package can be purchased through her webshop with which a Dutch citizen can declare themselves autonomous. You can buy a fake embassy sign for a few bucks. Nail that on the front door and creditors and bailiffs will be warned. Someone with “diplomatic immunity” lives here. This person is ‘autonomous’ and – supposedly – falls outside Dutch law. Rules do not apply, rights can be discussed. With autonomous people. They can easily reconcile their principles with social assistance benefits, but a sovereign citizen, on the other hand, hands in his passport and citizen service number and no longer ‘exists’ for the government – at least that is the aim.
Jeanette Lohuis does not pay taxes “on principle”. She says she never gave the government permission to collect it from her. “There is no contract.” Even in Spain, if she has already registered there, she pays no income tax and no road tax. “I drive to the store and back, so I don’t burden the road.” To show that she is really reasonable, she does not make a fuss about excise duties and simply pays VAT for her groceries. She is concerned about the “overflow” of taxes that leaves her with nothing left to live on. “The system is wrong. I am willing to pay, but on my terms.” She is busy creating a place in the world where her conditions apply. On that enormous piece of land in Spain. “Here you will find a freedom that is not available in the Netherlands.”
Foreign rain
Is it strange that I see something of her autonomous dream in programs like I leave (AVROTROS) and Things have changed (SBS6)? And can the enormous popularity of this away-from-the-Netherlands TV be explained by a similar, widespread sentiment? Is the Netherlands too finished, too regulated, too boring? Are lives too fixed? How many people have a job or position on their business card that can no longer be explained to a normal person? What are we doing? We go. Get out of here.
The fun for the viewer who does not emigrate lies in the fact that initially more rules, laws, red tape and procedures are imposed on the departures. And often in a language they do not (yet) speak. Contractors abroad also do not honor agreements. Foreign rain also seeps through the roof. Money always runs out, no matter where you are. And you have to pay taxes everywhere.
But the departed person wins a world that we only vaguely know from the past. The Freeling family was followed seven years ago I leave. Myron quit his job as a city developer, Dora quit as a self-employed person in the cultural sector. With their two sons they left for Castelleone di Suasa in Italy, where they bought an old farmhouse with 1.6 hectares of land for 75,000 euros. “It is less well organized in Italy,” says Myron. “That gives you space to live life the way you want.” Hey, who did I hear say this?
The Freelings demolished, built, shoveled and dug. They had never worked so hard and so intensively, especially not together. Now they can call themselves owners of a campsite. Summer after summer with Dutch families cooking between the tents, eating together, talking, making music. To return to the life before they left after a week or so.