Tradition meets technology in Mqabba fireworks display

Months of hard work last night went up in smoke - and dazzling colour - as seven parishes around the islands rang in the feast of Santa Marija with fireworks displays.

Mqabba has two reasons to celebrate this year - the annual festa comes just days after the St Mary's Band Club won the coveted world fireworks championship in Italy.

Yesterday evening an impressive amount of fireworks lit up the clear night sky above the small village which has been in celebratory mode since last week when word of the victory in Rome spread like wildfire and sparked off enthusiastic celebrations.

In the morning, some 30 men, most wearing red t-shirts, were busy working in a field, the scorching sun just a nuisance that did nothing to stop them. They were lining up fireworks for the much-anticipated evening show, during which fireworks are let off in time with the music.

Ronald Zammit was running around, the stress etched on his face, making sure that everything was where it should be. The pyromusical show presented by the band club was fully computerised, with the choreography planned two months before, he explained. In the evening people would be treated to a 10-minute show at the beginning and another seven-minute one to wrap up the evening. In the two hours in between, the sky was lit intermittently as fireworks were let off about 600 more times.

Seventy-three-year-old Nicholas Ghigo was helping out. Fireworks have been his passion since childhood - he has been involved since the 1950s. Getting badly burnt while mixing colours back in 1975 has never put him off from giving a hand.

"I had burns on 32 per cent of my body," he said, pulling up his shorts to show the marks of skin grafts. "It was on May 28, and I came home just days before the feast. My skin was so tender that if anyone touched me, it would simply come off. "But I could not stay in and miss the fireworks show. So I just went up on the roof and saw it from there," he said, before hopping on his bike and cycling to the village centre, where more men were busy setting up the ground fireworks.

Two men were winched up by a crane to assemble a huge fireworks wheel. Antoine Sciberras, the spokesman for the band club, explained how the flower would open and close, expanding from a mere four feet to a staggering 24. A total of 30 ground fireworks stations lined the street opposite the church.

"This is not just a one-day show - we do it every day for a week," Mr Sciberras said. The men barely sleep a wink for days - after one show they have to dismantle everything and the next morning they set up anew.

The festa does not come cheap for the people of Mqabba, who collect thousands to have a splendid fireworks display which attracts people from all over the island. Mr Sciberras said the festa has been known to cost some Lm32,000.

But was this not a waste of money; cash up in flames? "It's tradition. If we stop doing this, a big part of our folklore will also finish," was his reply. It was difficult to argue with him.

The next village was also gearing up for the festa. Qrendi's fireworks might not be as grandiose as those of Mqabba, but the people involved in setting them up were just as busy yesterday afternoon.

Do the two villages compete? Josef Aquilina, who takes care of the Qrendi band club's radio station, said "not really". Mqabba, he pointed out, is the world champion, and Qrendi has other expenses apart from organising the festa.

Ghaxaq, Mosta, Attard, Gudja and Victoria are also celebrating the festa today.