Joseph Muscat’s government has put its eyes on Castile Square and wants to change it into a remarkable venue. The Malta Independent’s editorial on Thursday, 5 March, was dedicated to the controversy that such an announcement has created. This is going to be another project which will turn into a bête noir for the current government.

It has now become very clear that any development in Valletta is destined to give rise to controversy. This one, too, lacks an overwhelming consensus. This is rightly so as Valletta is a sensitive city. Past governments have had their share of controversies. George Borg Olivier pulled down Valletta’s main gate to replace it with a Fascist/Futurist inspired entrance. The Nationalist Government sought to mend such an offence by financing a new one. Piano’s project was not without its critics but finally it went through.  There were other projects such as the housing block overlooking the entrance of Valletta built by the Socialist Government of the 70s or the plans for St John’s museum. These too were controversial. The latter was not contested from an aesthetical point of view but out of the fear that such a project would damage the Conventual Church of the Knights of St John’s.

I think that there is a consensus about the development of Castile Square. Aesthetically, the current area is not nice. But in trying to solve an aesthetical problem, the government has ended up creating a new one. Aesthetics depend on the  power of imagination.

Imagination in this case ceased to be the only measure to proceed. This project has been inadvertently landed into the political arena. Instead of opening the design of this square to a public competition, where local and foreign architects would have been invited to submit their proposals, the government went for a direct commission. I have nothing against direct commissions in architecture. They normally work when the assigned architect has already made a name for himself. Yet such a choice is not without its controversy. The Piano saga is a case in point.

But going to a direct order has increased the controversial element. The name of the architect has been kept secret till now. This gives smells of political favouritism. Joseph Muscat’s behaviour is very strange in this case. When in Opposition, Muscat organized all sorts of competitions, such as the one for the new party logo, butnow he is doing the opposite.

There is no doubt that this project is aimed to enhance the significance of this area  in front of Malta’s political powerhouse. However, the political significance that Castile came to assume in the past forty years (a political significance that it did not have before) makes it a more sensitive place.

Moreover, there are other issues which need to be mentioned. The problems of Valletta are not only of an aesthetical nature. In my opinion, there is also the important factor that Valletta has been losing its population and all aesthetic projects implemented so far have not helped her to restore a declining population. This administration is merely repeating the previous governments’ mistakes.

What Valletta needs to tackle rather urgently, is its empty and derelict property as well as the  parking problem. Parking has already been an issue of controversy. In my opinion, it was a big mistake that no underground car park was developed in front of the Presidential Palace (St George’s Square). I can understand the concern about the preservation ofunder ground relics but those beneath this square were not in my opinion more important than having a car park, which is desperately needed for our modern living.

Other big cities, such as Rome and Paris, took similar decisions in the past, and they always opted to keep their city vibrant. Valletta is the only capital city – and I want to stress this – that is continuing to lose itspopulation.

I know that I am going to sound controversial, but before engaging in such a project, the Government should have seriously considered creating an underground car park beneath Castile Square. I know about the risks that such a project entails. This Government does not want a repetition of the saga that engulfed the development of the museum beneath St. John’s Square. But good governance means having courage to take realistic decisions.

Yet, in the proposal of this design, the project did not take into consideration that the space in front of Castile was used for the storage of grain. There were grain silos (fosos) similar to those one finds in Floriana and in front of St Elmo. Most probably, any of the remaining flagstones will be destroyed. I hope that we do not assist to the repetition of the sad story I witnessed in the development of Cospicua’s quay where eighteenth-century original flagstones were barbarically destroyed. Even in Malta, we have our Isis warriors who destroy with jackhammers our historical past!

Instead of preserving this artefacts and incorporating them into the project, they were destroyed forever.

I am sure that creating a car park, does not necessarily mean that one would have to sacrifice all historical features that might be unearthed in the process. Some features can be reused as the knights did.

At the same time, the government is risking to become entangled in political ridicule normally associated with CHOGMor papal visits. The government is not asphalting the roads that will be used by the CHOGMcars. The emphasis is now being shifted onto public squares but they are not solving Valletta’ problems. Finally, this is a decorative or cosmetic change that would have no demographic impact on Valletta at all.As was the case with past projects, this facelift isabysmally failingto address the real problems of this capital.

In other words, this project risks becoming anomalous, if not irrelevant, to the real needs of our city.