Those years also saw the construction of roads systems without any respect for ecology or agriculture. This was now a new Maltese-speaking middle class that was lifted up to partake in the new age of consumerism. It used up vital land but kick-started the new middle class who could now boast of owning an asset, and hypothecate their home for new ventures. Mintoff’s years brought about the home ownership scheme and the building development areas, which meant giving out plots of land for a pittance, and it created two things. Then came the 1970s with the desecration of Bugibba and Marsalforn and Xlendi, and more significantly the transformation of Sliema. Naxxar, Zurrieq and so many other villages were ripped apart. Churches otherwise hidden behind narrow roads were opened to traffic. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Nationalist and Labour politics introduced the idea of tearing through village centres with new roads. That was before the boom of the late 1960s that saw so many pristine valleys eaten up by rich expats and Maltese with their villas. In 1961 over 55 years ago, Brockman lamented about the changing face of the Maltese islands. I was reading the book of Eric Brockman, Last Bastion, Sketches of the Maltese Islands. Our concerns are not new, indeed there is an eerie resemblance to the misgivings of the past. You really have to go back and see that this is not the first time we have expressed so much frustration about the general abandonment besieging Malta. It is then that you realise how beautiful Malta and Gozo are and what we have done to raze these Islands to the ground. W hen the spring season strikes the Maltese islands, there is an unimaginable attractiveness that makes you want to be in the Maltese countryside, next to some 1,000 different flowering plants, converting this Mediterranean island into a garden of Eden.
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