The Sorrows of Malta (1): The Land

How the 'paradise of the Mediterranean' became a concrete jungle

I’ve always had a certain fascination for small countries and micro states. I’m curious about how such states came to exist, how they resisted absorption into larger national entities, and how they position themselves in the new ‘borderless’ world of the 21st century where smallness can make states vulnerable.   Malta is the smallest country in the EU, where I’ve just spent my first foreign trip since the beginning of the pandemic.

The last time I was in Malta was in 2010, when I was researching my book Fortress Europe.  Back then I stayed mostly in Valletta and the south of the country, where I interviewed government officials, asylum seekers and NGOs, and the lunatic neo-Nazi Norman Lowell. 

All this was easily done, because Malta is so small that nowhere is very far from anywhere else. Many things about Malta surprised me then: the beauty of the capital, with its limestone buildings, its wooden window galleries, its fortress-like walls and its ancient winding steps looking over the harbours on both sides.  I was also struck by the range of cultural and historical influences that have flowed through such a small territory.

Malta’s history has been shaped by its strategic location between Europe and Africa and its natural harbours, both of which have made it a persistent target and object of invasion.  Though Malta’s national identity is founded on its two great sieges in 1565 and 1941, and its reputation as a ‘bulwark of Christianity’, it is a real cultural melting point, where ancient megalithic temples can be found alongside vestiges of its Phoenician, Roman, Arab, Aragonese, Norman, Italian, and British past, and the religious institutions founded by the Knights of Malta, whose members came from all over Europe.   Byron, Coleridge, Caravaggio, Napoleon, Churchill and Roosevelt, George Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev – all these people have passed through Malta at one time or another.

That’s a lot of history for a small island-republic of some 515,000 inhabitants, and the Maltese are rightly proud of it.  It’s all the more shameful and incomrehensible therefore, to see how gratuitously that heritage is being trashed, not by the migrants who were once described the Maltese right as the spearhead of a ‘new siege of Malta’, but by a disastrous combination of mass tourism and an unrestrained construction boom that is literally covering the islands in concrete.

Take the bus from Valletta to Gozo and you pass through a featureless  desolation of nondescript towns and developments that blur into each other with the same featureless anonymity.  The absence of parks, trees or open spaces adds to the oppressive claustrophobia. Malta has its own tradition of indigenous vernacular architecture to build on, but the construction companies are in too much of a hurry to make money to pay even lip service to that heritage.

The result is that twenty-five percent of the country is now covered in concrete, compared with an average of five percent elsewhere in the EU, yet evidence of construction is ubiquitous.  Even in Gozo, supposedly the more pristine and laidback of the islands, cranes loom over almost every town and village and the same identical themepark villas are sprouting going up everywhere.

Some of this over-development is intended to cater for the housing needs of the Maltese themselves – and the estimated 70,000 foreigners who have taken up residence there - but the architectural havoc being wrought on the Maltese coast derives specifically from the tourist industry.  Today tourism constitutes some 29 percent of Malta’s GDP and an average of 2.9 million tourists visit the islands every year. 

Carmageddon

In a country with few natural resources,  Malta can’t be blamed for wanting to make money from tourism, but rarely have I seen a country so hellbent on destroying everything that makes it attractive and appealing to visitors.  This environmental devastation has been compounded by the absolute domination of the motorcar. 

Malta has more cars per percentage of the population than any country in Europe - a ridiculous outcome given its size.  Its narrow streets are permanently clogged with traffic, so that you seem to be constantly breathing petrol.  Because most Maltese towns have only the tiniest of pavements, pedestrians often have to mingle with traffic, so that you spend much of your time looking over your shoulder and dodging cars while trying to ignore the constant barrage of engines.   The twnety-six mile drive from Valletta to Gozo takes about an hour and forty minutes, as buses grind their way through ugly coastal towns consisting of the same honeycomb apartments. that destory the will to live.

In his book Happy City Charles Montgomery argues that urban design is the key to the creation of contented sustainable communities based on low traffic flows, pedestrianisation, social spaces, and well-funded or free transport.  Malta is the opposite of that.  Its bus system is actually very efficient – and cheap – but it’s consistently undermined by precisely the kind of urban sprawl that Montgomery condemns.

The cruise ship passengers and rich boat people may not mind – all they need is a shopping trip and a few restaurants by the waterfront and maybe a quick peek at the Caravaggios, but this blanket of treeless concrete is likely to wipe out what little agricultural and recreational land Malta still has, while multiplying the risk of run-off flooding. 

Then there is the wildlife.  Malta doesn’t have any animals to look at it, but it did have a lot of birds. It ought to be a paradise for birdwatchers, because so many migrating species pass over the islands.  But birds are also targets for Malta’s hunters, who shoot them down in the spring and autumn.  In the rest of Europe hunters are not allowed to shoot in spring.  In Malta they can, and do, despite half-hearted attempts by the government to stop them.

Malta’s hunters don’t care what they shoot. Eagles, ospreys, cranes, storks, turtle-doves and even flamingos.  Why would anyone shoot a flamingo? For the taxidermy industry or simply for the craic. Whatever the reason, these hunters don’t like to be told not to do it. They guard their rights jealously, blasting away at the skies throughout the spring and summer so that walkers in what remains of the countryside take their lives into their own hands, and the hunters also intimidate birdwatchers and campaigners who try to stop them.

This is what the EU’s smallest country is doing to itself.  It would be a mistake to assume that the Maltese are uniquely disposed to such devastation. Like anywhere else, Malta has environmentalists and campaigners who protest against over-development and the destruction of trees, and campaign for more trees to be planted and for natural spaces to be protected. 

A 2015 referendum on spring hunting was only won by the pro-hunting lobby by the narrowest of margins.  What Malta lacks are politicians willing to take action to protect the islands. Its two main parties are closely linked to the construction industry and both are committed to a model of economic growth based on construction and tourism that threatens to turn the islands that the Romans called Melita – the land of honey into a smoke-filled, traffic-bound built-up Mediterranean dystopia.

Malta still has beautiful coves and beaches.  It still has enchanting neighbourhoods in Valletta, the Three Cities, and in Victoria, the capital of Gozo, where you can walk without breathing in petrol or dodging marauding cars. It has the fabulous old Arab capital of Medina, a UNESCO heritage site that is worth a visit to Malta in itself. 

It will always have the Mediterranean to attract the yachters, cruise ships and sunbathers, but a rock covered in concrete will eventually lose its appeal.  Because contrary to what Schumacher once argued small is not always beautiful, not in the 21st century, unless you make the effort protect what makes it beautiful, and right now Malta is utterly failing to do that.