Admirers of the late Dom Mintoff have been given the chance to own his favourite private space: his Delimara residence has been put up for sale.

A number of for sale signs have been put up at L-Gharix, which was built a short distance away from Mr Mintoff’s favourite swimming spot, Peter’s Pool, where he used to swim all year round.

The house was at the centre of controversy when it acquired an unwanted neighbour in 1987: the Delimara power station. The power station lies just across the road from L-Gharix, fuelling speculation that the site was deliberately chosen by the Nationalist government of the day to spite its political rival.

Mr Mintoff had objected to the plans, and had even submitted proposals for a number of alternative locations and suggestions on how the power station could be built to minimise the impact on his property. But these proved to be futile.

While L-Gharix continued to serve as Mr Mintoff’s primary residence while the power station was being built, he ended up moving to his other home in Tarxien soon after it started operating in 1992, citing the resulting noise and pollution as the reason.

In any case, the decision led Mr Mintoff and his wife Moyra to open a constitutional case in 1994, in which they claimed that their fundamental human right to enjoy their own property had been violated by the construction of the power station.

The First Hall of the Civil Court upheld their claim in 1995, although it did not decide on compensation at this stage.

The government appealed the ruling, but in 1996, the Constitutional Court ruled that the construction of a power station a few metres away from L-Gharix was tantamount to the expropriation of the property. The court argued that the property had effectively been rendered worthless, and that it also lost any subjective value for the Mintoffs as they could no longer use it as their residence.

The courts eventually decided on compensation in 2004, awarding the Mintoffs Lm360,000 (€838,574).

But Mr Mintoff insisted that this compensation was not adequate, and took the case up to the European Court of Human Rights.

However, the ECHR dismissed his claims, noting that the award not only covered the entire value of the property, but also exceeded it by some Lm140,000, apparently as compensation for the inconvenience caused since 1992.

Mr Mintoff continued to live in his Tarxien residence, where he died, at the age of 96, on 20 August last year.

But L-Gharix continued to be the place most associated with the former prime minister, and when the Labour Party’s Sensiela Kotba Socjalisti launched its book on its former leader last October, the Delimara residence proved to be an obvious choice of venue.

That book launch may have been the last public event to take place in the residence: unless, of course, its future owners have different plans in mind.