A fitting memorial commemorating the departure of the last British contingent on March 31, 1979, is long overdue. However, a new monument compatible with the aesthetic ambience of this historical site should remain on the exact spot chosen by the late Prime Minister Dom Mintoff for many reasons.

On October 14, 1992, Mintoff wrote to Dominic Fenech, who was preparing a feature for a two-volume publication Birgu -A Maltese Maritime City, stating: “Il-Birgu was chosen as the site of the Freedom Monument because it was the city which was occupied by foreign forces (i.e. the Knights) to turn the island into an abject island fortress until our times.

“It was also the city from which the last foreign contingent was made to depart by a four-year old Republic of Malta, neutral and non-aligned after a long and arduous struggle.”

The site, known as the Marina Grande during the Knights’ period, was also responsible for giving Vittoriosa a formidable European ethos when, in the Middle Ages, seafarers from Genoa, Pisa, Venice and Catalunya took up residence there, giving this maritime city a cosmopolitan admixture and a measure of prosperity, introducing traditions and festivals which have survived to this day. A new monument embodying the agony and the ecstasy on the long bumpy road to freedom, as willed by the then prime minister, can manifest itself artistically in order to fit contextually with the monumental baroque church of St Lawrence overlooking the site.

Two hundred years ago, a magnificent monument was erected in neo-classical style at the Lower Barrakka to commemorate the death of Sir Alexander Ball.

Let us have a fitting monument that symbolically depicts the end of the British era, which the Cottonera people witnessed with tears and cheers as HMS London sailed past the Vittoriosa Marina on that fateful day.