The term ‘culture shock’ is not as innocent or benign as it may seem. At face value it simply means the experience of coming to terms with difference. In practice, however, it is generally used to describe the kind of feelings that are experienced when travellers from developed (for want of a better word) places first encounter less-developed ones. Usage-wise, the word ‘shock’ is telling.
I did not expect much of it as I packed my bags last week. Portugal is an EU member and, broadly speaking, heir to much the same legacy of beliefs, ideas, and lifestyle as Malta’s. The first things about the country that come to my mind include fortified wine and a style of architecture that drank too much of it. They do not include malnutrition, failed harvests, dirt roads, and such.
Sadly, I was disappointed. I did in fact experience rather major culture shock. Except it happened when I came back to Malta. Compared to Portugal, the place where I’ve spent most of my life feels decidedly wobbly on many counts. The surprise, then, was in the source of the shock, because we’re constantly told that our country is pretty much the best in Europe. Not that I ever believed it for a second, but still.
The disclaimer to what follows is that a short pleasure trip is just that. It would be very foolish to imagine that one week spent anywhere can produce the kind of deep knowledge that is necessary for sophisticated comparisons.
The general consensus is that the economy of Portugal is in deep trouble. Recent years have seen a string of strikes, bailouts, austerity measures and public-spending cuts. The GDP is on a long and crippling diet. In 2012, credit ratings agency Moody’s downgraded the country’s public debt to junk status, and Fitch and Standard and Poor’s did the same shortly after. The rate of unemployment stood at 12.6 per cent in 2015, with youth unemployment being almost three times that figure. The litany goes on and on.
Malta, on the other hand, is swimming in all-round economic health. Strikes and austerity measures are things that other people do, and bailouts exist only as part of election-campaign scaremongering. The ratings agencies are perfectly satisfied. The rate of unemployment was 5.4 per cent in 2015, while that for young people stood at 10.6 per cent (one of the lowest in the EU). Point is, we’re fine.
Malta is very much like a miser who has a fat bank account but lives with rotten plumbing and crumbling walls
Which is why I expected the comparison to be in Malta’s favour, and Portugal to be beautiful but rickety and coming apart at the seams. In terms of the built environment at least, it’s anything but. The cities and villages are in absolutely excellent condition. Wherever I went, the air was one of good organisation and orderliness.
Then there are the roads – by which I mean the highways as well as the minor roads. Their quality is high by any standards, unbelieveably so for a country that is supposedly on the brink of total economic collapse.
Coming back to Malta was a shock. The place feels unfinished and cobbled together. Living here, one tends to overlook just how astonishingly bad and dishevelled our built environment is. Our best major roads look like something you’d drive a tractor over in Portugal. No wonder so many filmmakers have chosen our streets to play the part of war-ravaged places.
And yet, we’re told we’re doing very well indeed. What that usually means is that there are more cars, more pleasure boats, more people in restaurants, more people who hold several jobs, and so on. It also means soaring property prices, a healthy rental market, a queue of betting companies who wish to set up shop here, and tradesmen whose services have to be booked several months in advance.
Let’s leave aside the fact that not everyone has access to the cornucopia. For example, the Finance Minister was very guarded when asked if the government would consider increasing the minimum wage last week. He said it would not necessarily solve the problem of poverty. Which is true, except the minimum wage is not just about poverty. Surely an economy which describes itself as a miracle should be generous with the crumbs?
My point, however, is about infrastructure. Somehow, all the wealth and fantastic statistics have so far failed to translate into a public built environment which is decent. This is a country where wheelchair users are homebound, simply because there is no such thing as a system of proper pavements. The rest of us just hop and skip over the stones and bits of concrete and other rubbish, or avoid the pavements altogether.
No such worries where I came from. The obvious answer is that Portugal has enjoyed a windfall of EU funds, and that the excellent roads and general feel of quality are their direct result. But then I was under the impression that Malta too has received very substantial EU funds. Trouble is, they seem to have been absorbed by the piss-poor infrastructure – the same infrastructure, that is, which is routinely destroyed by developers as they go about converting every conceivable space into the monetary profit that fattens the economic statistics.
Portugal is a country that’s going broke in style. Malta, on the other hand, is very much like a miser who has a fat bank account but lives with rotten plumbing and crumbling walls. If we are the best in Europe, we certainly hide it very well.
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