Last Sunday at the national protest against corruption, I stood with my back to St James Ditch. In front of me was the newly-cleaned façade of the Auberge de Castille, under a bright blue sky. To the left were the lovely, old walls of St James Cavalier.
Between them, further back, I could see the beautiful Baroque exterior of St Catherine of Italy church. To my right was the Old Garrison Chapel, today the Malta Stock Exchange, and a sweeping vista over the Grand Harbour.
This is a familiar setting but most people usually pass through quickly. I never have the opportunity to scrutinise and admire it for a couple of hours. It is a fabulous and spectacular location.
The day before the protest, I had attended the seminar ‘Valletta Beyond 2020’ organised by the Valletta Alive Foundation. I agreed with one of the speakers, Alex Torpiano, who described this open area, let’s call it a square, as a missed opportunity.
It has been repaved and ‘revamped’ but somehow it lacks the amenities and seductive corners which tempt people to linger. There is something missing for it to function as a popular, daily, urban space.
The noise must have been quite daunting for anyone inside the building
Recently I walked across it when it was quiet. The spaces are confusingly divided by metal barriers and chains. There is no shade or shelter. People are not attracted to spend time there, to just sit and chat and watch the world go by. The same goes for the new De Valette Square just beyond, which also lacks activity.
On the other hand, removing the roundabout outside the Auberge de Castille has opened up the area to a new use which it never had before. It now offers a dramatic venue for large political meetings, with crowds gathering just underneath the windows of the Prime Minister’s office and the Cabinet room, the seat of power.
All the Leader of the Opposition and other speakers had to do was point upwards to the left and say “those people in there” and everyone in front of them knew exactly what and who they meant, shouting and raising a forest of ‘Barra’ placards in the wind.
The Prime Minister, Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri presumably stayed away that day and the doors and shutters were closed, but the noise must have been quite daunting for anyone inside the building.
• The word ‘surreal’ is currently a common reaction to the government’s response to the Panama Papers. In ordinary speak, surreal means bizarre.
Surrealism in art combines dreams and reality, mixing fantasy and fact. The eccentric surrealist artist Salvador Dalí often painted animals, such as tigers, elephants, zebras and fish, in strange landscapes and postures.
A bizarre twist in the Panamagate story occurred one evening when the lights remained on at the Auberge de Castille until an unusually late hour, soon after some new revelations were published.
People obviously assumed that this huge scandal was causing some ripples, and journalists gathered beneath the Prime Minister’s windows. Parliamentary Secretary Deborah Schembri, whose office is in the building, promptly announced that it had nothing at all to do with Panamagate.
Instead, she explained that she had just convened an urgent evening meeting to discuss Polidano’s menagerie of wayward lions and assorted wild animals kept at the Montekristo Estate. Yes, it really was quite surreal.
• In Parliament last week MP Claudette Buttigieg proposed that the vilification of religion clause should be retained, making an exception for artistic productions.
It is a fascinating debate and the online responses and comments merit an in-depth study in themselves. One line of criticism took the view that Buttigieg’s comments are flawed, as it is impossible to draw a line between what is artistic expression or not.
By the same reasoning, therefore, we should immediately abolish the Arts Council and the Arts Fund, because nobody can have any idea why they exist.
Defining the arts is far from easy but that does not mean that artistic expression, productions and activity do not exist. Creativity is manifest in all human endeavour, but artistic expression does not apply to everything.
When watching a theatre piece, for example, in our minds we suspend reality and interpret messages in a different way than at a political meeting (although often we must suspend reality there too). In its own way, a political protest might be very creative but that does not make it an artistic production that merits the attention of the Arts Council.
I do not have strong feelings or a sense of urgency about the vilification of religion clause. I am not easily offended by anti-religious comments, nor will I readily make any, and I will take the importance of freedom of expression for granted here.
It annoys me, however, that some people pushing for the removal of this clause are so trigger-happy to vilify anyone who disagrees with their supposedly liberal views. The personal insults launched at Buttigieg that I read online, because she suggested a kind of compromise, are off-putting.
Whatever happened to rational debate about ideas? The internet is littered with aggressive trolls and louts, but one expects better from people lobbying for freedom of expression.
petracdingli@gmail.com