Do flowers really bloom in Cottonera?

I refer to Eddie Aquilina's Flowers Bloom In Cottonera (April 24). I will not be drawn into the debate over the name of the new "garden". On the one hand it is a storm in a dolls house tea-cup; on the other, as every historian knows, place names are always significant. I am equally uninterested in the partisan-political who's who around the project. I do however have some comments to make in response to Mr Aquilina's piece.

According to the correspondent, this "garden" is a "gift" to the people of Cottonera. Wrong, dear Mr Aquilina. Governments are not in a position to make gifts - they simply administer the people's money.

The "garden" is not, as Mr Aquilina says, a "marvellously made up, 55,000 square metres of pleasant well-structured recreational space for the whole region". On the contrary, this Barrakka-meets-Hackney-housing-estate folly is the latest in a long list of aesthetic horrors defacing this island. The works basically consisted of chopping down some trees, removing the beautiful wild flowers that carpeted the groves, building some greenish walls and a cement platform as a sorry excuse for an idea, planting a hideous railing along the Margerita Lines, and putting up some pretty pointless wooden structures. At night the place is lit up to look like an overgrown runway.

Mr Aquilina tells us that he has "roots" in Cospicua. He then goes on to conflate, several times in his article, the words "Cottonera" and "Cospicua". It is of course true that Cospicua is part of Cottonera. However, Cospicua people, like their neighbours in Vittoriosa and Senglea, quite fiercely cherish the specific identity of their individual town. It is therefore insensitive to use the words interchangeably. For instance, take Mr Aquilina's sweeping statement, "young people who never dreamed of visiting Cottonera even occasionally, now do so frequently, for entertainment and more". A mild version of that may be true of Vittoriosa, but most certainly not of Cospicua and Senglea. For the residents of Cospicua, the wine bars sprouting in neighbouring Vittoriosa offer no consolation.

Mr Aquilina's article amounts to what I call a "standard tropology of Cottonera propaganda", most of which does not stand up to scrutiny. The siting of the sports complex, for instance, was completely insensitive to the lines of the Cottonera and Margerita fortifications. Fort St Angelo, quite possibly the most important historical site in Malta, is still today a disgraceful mess. The restoration of the Notre Dame gate and "various other historical buildings" mentioned by Mr Aquilina must be a figment of his imagination. The "elegant" Vittoriosa waterfront project includes an aesthetically-dubious block of flats (not too bad on the dockyard creek, awful on the Kalkara side). It would be unfair to say that nothing has been done to better Cottonera - the Maritime Museum, for instance, stands out as an excellent initiative. However, it is very fair to say that what has been done is very, very far from being good enough, and certainly nothing to write ecstatic articles about.

With respect to Cospicua, I am really not sure that the townscape has improved at all. Old buildings continue to be demolished to make way for flats, the historical parts of town (San Lazzru, Santa Margerita, etc.) are in a shambles, hideous monuments have been erected by the dozen, etc. The Number One Dock project is still on paper. True, substantial parts of town are largely intact and really quite beautiful. And real estate has picked up in recent years as the remaining old and vacant houses are scooped up by youngish buyers looking for quality residences at bargain prices. These and other positive circumstances, however, obtain in spite not because of the large-scale changes (or lack of them) brought about by government, local and/or otherwise.

Mr Aquilina assures us that he has been photographing the area for decades. May I suggest that he use slightly less tinted filters.