I know of a man who wishes to become an organic farmer. To enhance the environment, he has planted prickly pears around part of his land. He plans to breed the Maltese black chicken and to put an end to all illegal hunting and trapping activities. He has installed CCTV, but only as a means to stop drug abuse.

This Maltese Thoreau happens to be the owner of a dilapidated building that overlooks Il-Kalanka at Delimara. Endangered fowl aside, his idea is to turn this building into an ‘ecological boutique hotel’. There will be a tunnel that leads from the hotel to a Blue Flag beach complete with showers, and that’s because Thoreau is sensitive to the needs of disabled people who might want to freshen up at the beach.

In a nutshell, Kenneth Abela (for it is he) wishes to build a hotel at Kalanka. Fly-tipping and squatting aside, Kalanka still somehow manages to be a beautiful place. That’s on account of two things: it is a sheltered cove with some marvellous rock formations, and it is relatively free of the so-called development that has strangled and rendered soulless much of the Maltese coastline. All said, Abela knows that he can expect some resistance.

His strategy is worth exploring in some detail because it tells us a lot about the general manner by which developers manage to get their swollen foot in the door, even in places where building should be unthinkable. As reported, Abela decided to attack on two fronts.

First, he looked around for suitable case studies. Armier serves up an excellent one, because the owners of the illegal beach huts there are masters of their craft. They don’t just build – they also talk, and that’s partly the reason why their contraptions have survived a dozen Reiche and look set to last another thousand years.

Armier, they tell us, is not at all about cowboys. Rather, it is a case of powerless, downtrodden folks (‘iż-żgħir’) who would otherwise be condemned to spend their summers without a sea terrace and a seafront garage. The huts, they assure us, are simple places where families can unite and communities bond together in a rare instance of social harmony.

I love the way in which developers defeat the State using the State’s own fetishes and sacred language

Since no social harmony is harmonious enough without religion, Armier has its shrines and even a dedicated ritual corner where Mass is said. It has a festa, too, among other community events. Nor does the morality blaze end there, because there are regular clean-ups, zealous recycling regimes that do bitter battle with climate change, tree-planting projects, and so on. Add to all that the innumerable access facilities for the disabled, and the mould is set for many more summers of unity, ecology and equality.

Kenneth Abela seems to be very good at close study and mimicry. He has really gone to town with the morality and ecological babble. Thus his fields will be prime examples of organic agriculture, his building an ecological boutique hotel, his development a crusade against illegal hunting and trapping, and his tunnel a deep homage to equal access.

Abela’s green credentials mean that his fences are simply rows of the Mediterranean (by adoption) prickly pear. His chickens are no common mortals, but rather fine exemplars of the Maltese black chicken (whatever that is) and therefore a contribution to indigenous culture. He is also highly keen to get drug addicts to mend their ways. And so on.

Now I find this rather clever and charming. I love the way in which developers defeat the State using the State’s own fetishes and sacred language. Abela’s Blue Flag and accessible beach is a good example, because it borrows on the morality of a desirable formal designation to ruin a place which really needs no improvement other than a good clean-up.

The best Blue Flag a beach can have is the absence of flags altogether, and Kalanka has that. The disabled people I know have never complained to me about the lack of a tunnel in Delimara – their more pressing concerns include the disastrous general state of kerbs that makes them prisoners in their own homes. And showers belong in bathrooms, not pristine beaches. But never mind, the point is that the sacred language works.

The second prong in Abela’s strategy involves another magic word: footprint. I once found myself in Haridwar, a town in northern India which is sacred to Hindus on account of a footprint which is said to be Lord Vishnu’s. The print is cast in stone, and it will continue to cast its spell over Hindus for mortal eternity.

Now Din l-Art Ħelwa have said that the ruins of the old Kalanka hotel should be demolished and the place left to its devices. The fact that they’re right matters not a jot, because – as Abela is keen to remind us – the proposed hotel would simply occupy the footprint of the old one. No harm there, then.

Which is nonsense, for two reasons. First, footprints that are not Lord Vishnu’s can be made to go away. I can think of a million examples in Malta where indeed they should be made to do so. The huge derelict farm building that squats in the middle of the Swieqi valley is one. In Swieqi, as in Delimara, the favourite word of the would-be developers is ‘footprint’.

Second, it requires astonishing ignorance to limit the impact of a building to its footprint. At the very least, the negative space around any structure is an essential part of its form. More realistically, the impact of buildings on the landscape can and often does extend for miles beyond the immediate footprint – and that’s before we even mention infrastructure.

Except Abela is no ignoramus. That is the reason behind his passion for the Maltese black chicken and access ramps, and it is also why he has already cleared a sizeable patch of land around his beloved footprint. If a whole Indian town can exist by virtue of a footprint, there’s no reason why an ecological boutique hotel shouldn’t.

mafalzon@hotmail.com