Quite a few years back, if I remember correctly, a forward-looking opinion writer had remarked that the structural complex at Tigné peninsula was starting to look more like a modern manderaggio, the likes of which Valletta had once been so disgraced with.

I had raised my eyebrows then but I have now completely changed my mind.

The situation is already awful and, with two more high-rise towers in the pipeline for the tiny Tigné peninsula, it is surely going to get worse.

Thanks to a handful of authors with a social conscience who had written and condemned so vociferously the old manderaggio midway through last century, the revolting slums were demolished and done away with during the 1960s and 1970s.

Unfortunately, we have a much different story now because the new manderaggio is being labelled and advertised as the state-of-the-art architectural piece of the century. How we have reversed our qualities and standards of living!

I have always been taught and I have always believed that clean air and space are the basics of a healthy environment. I wonder how much of these will characterise Tigné, with so much overcrowding, congestion and air pollution.

To realise and convince oneself how unsightly and aesthetically lacking the whole complex is, one ought to have a look at it from Msida/Pietà creeks and then compare its strained heights with the elegance of the bastions in Valletta.

But, then, each apartment is being advertised as having a window with a view, a seaview to be exact.

Money has indeed turned people’s heads.