Malta has always been renowned for the beauty of its villages and the rural life associated with them. However, the passage of time has been relentless in its effects on villages and village life, to such an extent that several villages today are almost unrecognizable from what they were half a century ago.
Social interaction is far greater than it was in the past. A greatly improved infrastructure and more opportunities for social communication have resulted in many people moving out of their village to live in other parts of Malta. The other side of the coin has seen the arrival of many new residents in villages.
New ideas and lifestyles are sometimes not readily accepted by the villagers who regard these as nothing less than a ‘cultural invasion’
This accelerated social mix has helped to make villages more cosmopolitan and less insular than they were in the past. But it has also caused problems as new ideas and lifestyles are sometimes not readily accepted by the villagers who regard these as nothing less than a ‘cultural invasion’, which they deem highly unwelcome. This has often resulted in dividing villages in two, the older part being cut off from the newer, recently-built area because of artificially-created social barriers.
The change in villages has not only been social but also aesthetic, mostly in a negative sense.
Developers often cast an eye on a beautiful village house to demolish it and build a block of flats, maisonettes and garages instead. This has led to a situation where several cases of overdevelopment are ruining some of our beautiful villages. Recently, I was passing through Balzan and was astonished to note that in one particular street there were three cranes operating at the same time in different parts.
Talking about the ‘quiet and tranquil village life’ no longer makes any sense today.
The aesthetic cost of all this overdevelopment has been high.
First of all, it is a great pity to have beautiful village houses with large gardens demolished to have them replaced by ugly blocks of flats.
Secondly, some of these new residential blocks are nothing more than glorified slums. Indeed, I am amazed at the number of residential units that some developers manage to create out of relatively small plots of land.
Thirdly, if such residential units are situated in areas where property is very costly, it is often the case that they remain unsold for a long period of time because of the very high prices asked.
This sometimes results in having unsightly shell-form units remaining unoccupied for a couple of years.
This building frenzy has also meant that some villages have almost totally lost their rural character. The motto of Balzan is Hortibus undique septa, Latin for ‘surrounded by gardens’. However, today, one would have a tough time trying to locate the many gardens that used to surround Balzan because almost all have disappeared! This has meant that some of our villages have become mostly urbanised and that rural life as we understood it half a century ago belongs to the past.
Agriculture has declined too and gone are the days when the majority of the population was engaged in agricultural work. Today, we have some ‘villages’ with hardly any fields to speak of. It is true that there are some villages that have been fortunate enough to have saved many of their fields even today, such as several in Gozo, but, even here, the number of people involved in full-time rural pursuits is very small indeed.
If one examines the statistics, one finds that the majority of those involved in agriculture are part-timers. Rural life as we knew it is, therefore, slowly disappearing.
A corollary of this is the fact that today we are also close to losing a valuable national patrimony associated with villages: the Mediterranean diet. This was a beneficial offshoot of village life in the past and today we are more conscious of how healthy such a diet is.
Olives, tomatoes, peas, oranges, apples, etc. all formed part of the traditional Maltese diet associated with our rural heritage. However, this traditional Mediterranean diet has become almost inconspicuous. What do we find in many villages today? Fast food outlets serving the worst kind of food for our health: hamburgers, French fries, pastizzi (savoury pastries), etc. No wonder the high rate of cancer in Malta is so preoccupying!
I would like to finish on a positive note. It is heartening to observe that the village festa is still going strong even today. This centuries-old tradition is the peak event of village life. It is, perhaps, the one event that unites the whole village and in which all the social entities participate: band clubs, the Church, fireworks enthusiasts, political party clubs, youth centres, etc.
However, it is still likely that in the not-too-distant future, one will find it difficult to discern the difference between the urban and the rural, between the town and the village.