Queen Victoria’s monument, for example, would sit in a better context had it to be removed to Hastings Gardens.Valletta in recent times has been turned into an open city, endeavouring to harmonise its new mix of architectural styles accommodating legislative, administrative, and commercial and hospitality assets. From an original citadel it transformed itself into a British Royal Navy outpost, a post-colonial capital and finally a continental southern flank to the European Union.
These processes were not always serene – there were times when its artistic splendour was abandoned, when it was heavily bombarded, when its allure dwindled, eventually seeing its population shrivelling into a fraction of its zenith.
Still, thanks to different politicians, investors, architects and committed cultural artists, professionals and aficionados, who had the foresight to accelerate its future into a thriving capital city of culture, Valletta came close to realise its present call. Some challenges, however, still need to be confronted as the capital struggles to reconcile with its historical memory.
How could Valletta better mirror the national consciousness of a nation? Creating citizens in a new State has never been easy. Countries which had been subject to foreign robust ruling structures normally face stiffer trials. Following years of proselytisation about their masters’ ‘grander’ history, it takes time for the locals to come round and push their own national story to the front of education, the media and the public sphere, the latter considered to be the virtuous place of citizenship.
When initiating entry onto the international landscape of identities – in the case of colonies this usually happens after independence – as Iver Neumann, Norwegian political scientist and social anthropologist would put it: “The policies of entrants continue to be informed by memories of the logic of the suzerain system to which they once belonged.”
In Malta the Knights, who embellished Valletta with an imposing inheritance left a chivalrous legacy which is very difficult to evade when profiling an outline of national identity. Indeed one tends to rightly embrace that heirloom and project it as one’s own.
The case of the British colonial period offers a different experience. Over generations, the imperialist culture was absorbed and turned into one’s object of emulation. Memory, being a social construction of the past that feeds identity, saw the Maltese preserve colonial propaganda props even after independence perhaps to create a sense of estimation in the eyes of the international community.
They abound in Valletta: countless British royal coat-of-arms, a central statue of an imperial regent in the hub of the city and numerous sepulchral British monuments outnumbering local ones perpetuate a subservient past.
Their ubiquity is not historically justifiable. Is the past, as Eric Hobsbawm would conclude, legitimising? While secularising the Constitution now appears to be taken in earnest, decolonising the State has so far escaped nationalistic discourse.
Cities, mostly those that were subjugated by foreign powers or dictators, have rearranged their memorial landscape so as to shape their own historical identity.
Spain in 2007 legislated to safeguard historical memory; the result was the removal of Franco’s statues from public squares while most ex-Soviet states in Eastern Europe removed several Stalin statues.
Memory, being a social construction of the past that feeds identity, saw the Maltese preserve colonial propaganda props even after independence
Countries that had formed part of the British domain did not hesitate to remove monuments that commemorated subservience: Dublin in 1986 removed Queen Victoria from Parliament Square and donated the statue to Sydney while in 2015 the statue of Cecil Rhodes, British diamond tycoon and imperialist, was removed from the University of Cape Town.
Madge Dresser sees such controversial statues as symbols of the prevailing values of society. The British historian advises that it is better on the whole to keep the statues, optioning instead to re-contextualise them. At times an added plaque could reflect cultural changes and explain their earlier good or bad contributions.
Yumilya Kamska, commenting on war and memory, observes that occasionally bad history can be put to good use: transforming the statues from celebratory monuments to objective evidence could justify removing some problematic cultural objects and create room for more diverse creativity.
These critical opinions make sense: Malta’s Queen Victoria’s monument, for example, would sit in a better context had it to be removed to Hastings Gardens, which could eventually serve as a British memorial park. The scope behind removing or re-contextualising monuments is not to obstruct history.
A street in Paris, Rue Richepance, commemorating the re-establishment of slavery in 1802, was renamed after Joseph Bologne, a musician, son of an enslaved woman, known as Chevalier de Saint-George. A plaque, mentioning the change, ensured that visitors are confronted by multiple histories.
For 400 years Valletta seldom had the opportunity to raise its own monuments, first because the city was the knights’ residence and secondly because since 1800 the majority of its public spaces were arrogated by the colonialists’ propaganda memorials.
Maltese monuments in the capital, since independence, include a handful of nationalistic tributes (Vassalli is conspicuous by his absence), several prime ministers, one president, and a few recent commemorations gracing tourism or slight inspiration.
Are the Maltese, as anthropologist Marc Augé suggests, thinking of their identity when reconstituting their public places? Are they correctly evaluating the substance of colonial times? Should Valletta strive to strike a balance between its colonial past and republican citizenship?
A monument, a word derived from the Latin monumentum, is born out of death. It materialises the absence by creating a meaningful visual. It exhorts the living to acknowledge and accept that which is no more, supporting memory.
If it has been marked by tragedy, the emotional participation is stronger. In Malta the brutal death of a journalist last year, similar to what recently happened in other major capitals after terrorist attacks, provoked many people to create a shrine on a public monument in the heart of the city.
It drew a local and an international outpour arising from shock, laced with feared threats on free speech. Mourners chose to express their feelings on the Great Siege monument, a nationally-acclaimed apolitical civic altar (as happened in Paris after the Charlie Hebdo massacre on the monument for the Republic in 2015).
The Great Siege memorial remains the first Maltese monument in Valletta that since 1927 expressed a public manifestation of nationhood, more so as it is the only Maltese monument erected in the capital during the colonial years, reflecting an assertive statement by the first representative Maltese Parliament.
Because of this historical testimonial the area in front of the Courts of Justice could be considered as the sanctum of the capital’s public celebratory space, the oldest historical national unified memory. Ideally no other monuments, including the recent one of an ex-president, should be there. One could consider other prominent spaces for a permanent monument in Valletta or elsewhere.
It is high time we have a proper review of the monumental landscape in Valletta. It could be wise to appoint a non-political consultancy that could advise the executive on the value of our numerous artistic commemorative memorials in our capital, aware of their role in the wider context of nationhood and identity. Valletta needs to pick up the gauntlet.
Charles Xuereb lectures on collective memory and identity.