Environment Minister Leo Brincat said last Wednesday that the Family Park in Marsascala is about to get new facilities. As reported in Times of Malta, this means two things. First, that parts of the park will be handed over to private business and ‘commercialised’.

The parts that will likely be commercialised are the stables, the rock climbing wall, the restaurant and tea rooms, the area around the chapel, the amphitheatre and pill-box, the agri-centre, and the ‘space for open-air activities’. One wonders what that leaves out, but no matter.

Second, chunks of the park will be given over to new sports facilities. These might include a football pitch that would be used by the Marsascala club. Brincat said that entrance to the park will remain free of charge. Still, that leaves me with at least three peeves.

First, it would appear that the park is about to get smaller. Entrance may well be free but once past the gates, the new facilities (I love the doublespeak) will come thick and fast. What that really means is that the area of access will get smaller, unless one pays to sit at a table or climb rocks, or joins some or other sports club.

Second, this is a classic case of horror vacui taking over. I’m tempted to think of it as a Maltese speciality. It all starts in our homes. In my previous life I did the home blessing rounds as an altar boy. I remember wishing someone would invent some kind of small helicopter that would make it possible for the priest and me to navigate the typical home without knocking over a thousand liri’s worth of jardinières and vases at every turn.

The malady tends to spread to façades and via that route to spill over into our streets. The vast frontage of the Palazzo Farnese in Rome has little by way of bling, but that doesn’t stop the proud owner of a 21-foot empire in Ħal Wherever from putting out six gypsum lions, a nest of faux amphoras, and two fountains.

This is not a piece of misplaced snobbery. The jardinières may be period art deco and the commodes a masterclass of ancient marquetry but that still leaves us with too much in too small. Point is, we simply don’t do minimalist. And please, don’t for a second believe the home decoration pornography circulated with the Sunday papers. The size and quality factors are as unreal and optimistic as those for the rest of the genre.

Local councils have taken to it like 68 ducks to 6m² of pond. The cue is ‘street furniture’, which means forests of bollards, signs, water features, plaques, benches, and so on. Hardly surprising then that the Marsascala park should be well on the way to more is more. Still, there’s no saying those small helicopters can’t be commercialised.

Which brings me to my third point, known in pedantry circles as the ‘commercialisation of public space’. I have in mind the various ‘private sector initiatives’ that encroach on our public spaces and render them, well, private.

A small caveat. I have no illusions about the purity and universal accessibility of public space. Any space which is used by people is going to favour one group over another. The name ‘Family Park’ is a case in point. It implies that it should properly be the run of families, whatever that means. I’d think twice about walking there alone unless I wore a sandwich board that read ‘Family back in 10 minutes’.

Paradise Bay used to be one of the quietest spots on the island but is now pretty much a private lido

Qualifiers aside, I still think we’re witnessing a not-so-gradual encroachment of private over public. Consider two examples. San Anton Gardens is still a lovely place and all that, but every time I walk there I make sure to avoid the spot that used to be a greenhouse but is now a commercial tourist trap which insists on spewing out vile ‘traditional Maltese music’ on continuous loop.

Paradise Bay used to be one of the quietest spots on the island but is now pretty much a private lido. The music it foists on visitors is less traditional but no less unwelcome, to me at least.

I’m sure that in both instances the papers are in order and the owners are within their rights to do whatever they do – that both these businesses are properly regulated, in other words. But that’s my point exactly. Both are examples of the state handing over public land to private interests.

The hot air assures us that it is all to our general benefit, that private companies will always do it better and that it is worth paying a little money for a decent service. Maybe. But San Anton was perfectly fine as I remember it, and so was Paradise Bay. In any case, has the state given up so completely on its stewardship of public space?

There’s another thing. I’ve lost count of the number of parents who complained that it’s become impossible to spend a day out with children and not spend half of it bargaining over the next ice-cream or plastic toy. This is what happens when consumption takes over every minute of our lives. Places like the Family Park could be seen as a kind of safe haven, a respite from the tantrums over that essential third doughnut.

I don’t fancy myself as a didact and this is not a lecture on the immorality of spending. My argument is simply that it pays to have places that explore ideas and things other than consumption on continuous loop, and that public space is the type that is best-placed to provide them.

Put it this way. Families will now be able to enter free of charge and to exit with heavier tummies and lighter pockets. And, mentally, with more of the same to show for it.

mafalzon@hotmail.com