Over recent weeks I have enjoyed walking past the Tritons Fountain outside Valletta. This newly paved open space, with its grand water display, is gorgeous. But 10 large brown containers are ominously clustered around it, threatening to destroy the peace. They resemble Trojan horses, poised to unleash a destructive force to take over the place.
The boxes are to be opened as kiosks. But why should unattractive kiosks intrude in this beautiful public space? A couple of outlets near the buses would suffice to buy a drink or snack nearby. Once open, it will be tough to remove these kiosks again. The time to decide against them is now.
The sounds and vista of the fountain’s streaming water are delightful, especially on a hot day or in the evening. The Tritons Fountain is relatively modern, designed in the 1950s. But Valletta always had fountains, although water is scarce on these islands. When the city was built, there was a natural spring at one end of St Christopher Street, but it dried up.
A regular water supply to Valletta began with the aqueduct from Rabat, built by Grand Master Wignacourt and inaugurated with a fountain outside the Palace – later dismantled to accommodate British military parades in front of the Main Guard. It is now at Argotti Gardens in Floriana, and a ground-level fountain embellishes the square with jets of water.
Other, smaller fountains were dotted around Valletta, supervised by fontaniere. Unlike the Tritons Fountain, which was built as a monument, people would draw water from them. An early building regulation required each house to have a well. This bit of environmental common sense is consistently ignored by our planning authorities, along with other building traditions.
The Italian engineer Romano Carapecchia had designed large underground cisterns for water storage in Valletta, which are quite impressive to look at. In World War II some were used as bomb shelters but most are quite abandoned. Plans to convert some spacious cisterns into a museum beneath St John Square were gunned down. The disputed tapestries aside (now destined for a purpose-built museum beside the Co-Cathedral), surely these empty subterranean spaces could somehow be used creatively. Anything just left to rot, will rot. The theatre at St James Cavalier is in a former water cistern.
Once open, it will be tough to remove these kiosks again. The time to decide against them is now
Today water is not drawn from fountains or wells, and domestic water is supplied by reverse osmosis. But our natural groundwater aquifers are being depleted and wiped out, due to the inadequate regulation and abuse of boreholes. Over-development also hinders replenishment of groundwater.
The construction industry does not respect or work with nature. Energy efficiency is promoted on paper, but in truth most buildings of the last 30 years or so have disregarded their environment and context. They are not even geared up for basic living essentials, like climate control or garbage collection. People are obliged to affix unsightly air-conditioning units on balconies, and pavements are strewn with garbage bags, as there is nowhere else to place them.
Nightmare vision
Let’s face it, people my age and older will be the last generations to remember the old, quiet places of Malta. We can still remember sleepy towns and small, dreamy villages, with long, lazy afternoons when the only noise was flies buzzing at the window panes. We can recall the mood of silent, empty streets with an occasional car rattling past.
The pace of change is growing faster, and that world is gone. Nostalgia will not bring it back. Until recently, it was still possible to sense this atmosphere in parts of Gozo, but if a tunnel is built, heavy traffic will flow directly across and this will change too.
This week a statement, reportedly from the Federation of Estate Agents (FEA), touched a raw nerve. It warned of potential mass evictions, with existing rental stock unable to house the huge influx of people from overseas. Steep property prices are pushing average Maltese buyers out of the market. The FEA quickly clarified that this was not an official position. But the opinion struck a chord anyway, as it reflected a vision growing in the minds of many people. It is a nightmare vision of impending doom, dreaded like the coming of an apocalypse.
It is a nightmare vision of crazy prices and unaffordable homes, and of further expansion of the construction industry. It is a vision of vast demolition of buildings, endless cranes and trucks of stones and dust, and the wiping out of our traditional streetscapes. It is a vision in which our streets become entirely jammed with traffic, choked in fumes, and where nobody can get around anymore. People will be trapped in their homes or cars.
As though on cue, a European survey showed that, on average, the Maltese live in larger homes than people in other European countries. Yet Malta has the smallest size of territory per capita. Go figure.
The manic drive to build is apparently being accelerated by an influx of people moving to Malta. In the run-up to Malta’s EU membership referendum of 2004, the anti-EU camp peddled the line that Europeans would take Maltese jobs. Now the outlook has turned full circle, with a seemingly insatiable appetite for foreign workers and residents.
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