Valletta shopkeepers have been nagging for months about the troubles they’re facing because of declining parking space and far too much building action near the gateway to the city. Now they have something else to blame for loss of business: the new buses. I’ve never agreed with any of this, and I’ve long thought that the problem lies elsewhere.

Parking, buses and the Renzo Piano project don’t affect my decision to visit Valletta, and still I never bother to go unless I have no choice but to do so because of an appointment. And afterwards, when I trail lackadaisically round the shops purely for the sake of it – because once I’m there, I ‘majtezwel’ – I think to myself that it’s no wonder I never bother.

This might be really tough for those who own shops there, but the fact is that Valletta is no longer worth bothering with in retail terms. It might be my imagination, but there actually seems to be less on offer in the shops there than there was some years ago, and it’s getting worse as the months go by, with some places now reducing their stocks and building up their branches in Sliema or other towns. It is, I suppose, a vicious cycle: as demand tails off, shops close down and reduce stock, and the more they do that, demand tails off still further.

You can lay on all the parking you can, have free buses running into the city every five minutes, stop all building work and my guess is that people still won’t go into Valletta like they used to do, because life and habits have changed. Valletta used to be Malta’s shopping headquarters because, quite simply, it was where the best and most shops were. But over the last few years its competitive edge has been eroded by retail development in the high streets of other towns and by the phenomenal growth of Sliema as Malta’s new shopping HQ.

Sliema has attracted the high street fashion chains which are the ones that pull in the shoppers. They come for the chains and while there, they’ll look at other things. But if you haven’t got the fashion chains, then you’re dead in the water. In terms of numbers, Sliema now has far more shops than Valletta does, and in terms of variety and quality, there is just no comparison. The few good retail brands in Valletta have bigger and better branches in Sliema, making a trip to the capital even more pointless.

When The Point shopping mall opened last year at the Tigné end of Sliema, shopkeepers at the Ferries end panicked because they thought it would pull away all their customers. But it didn’t. It simply made Sliema an even bigger draw for people from all over Malta, and it helped kill off Valletta. Shoppers who go to The Point also hike all over the Ferries, not least because of the presence there of one of the biggest shopping magnets known to worldwide womankind: Zara. The net result is that Valletta has gone into a retail coma while Sliema is buzzing.

Let’s face it. It isn’t easier to park in Sliema than it is to park in Valletta. It’s much worse and certainly far more expensive if you don’t find a place on the street. And it isn’t better served by buses, but much worse too. As for building development and the inconveniences associated with it, let’s not even go there. But people go there still because it’s worth the trip. They know that after an hour stuck in traffic on a Saturday morning, 40 minutes trying to park and 15 minutes walking back from some side-street, they can begin a day-long assault campaign on a long list of shops, enjoy it and maybe even go home with something they want.

The honest truth is that Valletta has become inordinately depressing, and I say this with sadness as someone who has longstanding sentimental ties to the place. But we have to face the fact that its time has now passed because our way of life has changed. The days of ‘going into town’ for a spot of browsing round the shops are gone. They are gone not because Valletta itself no longer has anything to offer or because the buses are bad or there’s no parking. They’re gone because Sliema has finally taken over and nobody is going to bother going to Valletta when they can get the same shops and 50 others in Sliema.

The sort of people who used to go into Valletta from towns and villages all over Malta, to look for a dress for a night out or a pair of shoes for their children, are now going to Sliema. I’m quite sure that Valletta retailers have surveys which tell them this. The mistake they’re making is to think that people have made the switch because they can’t park in Valletta. That’s ridiculous, because they’re even less likely to be able to park in Sliema.

I think that Valletta shopkeepers really have to accept now that the change is permanent, and that the only thing that will bring shoppers back to the city is a very different kind of retail mix – if Valletta offers what people can’t get in Sliema. That would be indie shops, super style and highly individual boutiques. But there is not much of a market here for that kind of thing anyway, because this is the land of sheep.

Some months ago, I stood with one of my sisters in Valletta’s main drag, a location, which, in any other European capital city context, would be where all the best and smartest shops are (and also the best and smartest people, but that’s another story). A couple of tourists, thoroughly perplexed, stopped to ask us where “all the good shops” are. These are the good shops, my sister said. There’s nothing else. And at that point we realised just how bad it is, because when you’re so used to things, you just don’t notice until you see it through the eyes of a stranger.

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