On Wednesday, the Central Bank of Malta and MaltaPost launched a joint product consisting of a numismatic silver coin and a silver stamp commemorating the 50th anniversary of Malta’s Independence.

This product also marks the start of a working relationship between the two institutions in the marketing and sales of the bank’s numismatic and commemorative coin products.

In his address, Professor Josef Bonnici, Governor of the Central Bank of Malta, spoke about the economic transformation that was set in motion by Independence, not least the creation of a central bank in November 1967 and the setting up of the Central Bank in April 1968.

Independence marked a fundamental change in the economy with the rapid industrialisation that followed. The Governor added that since Independence, gross domestic product per capita shot up from the equivalent of €534 in 1964 to €7,186 in 2013, a more than 13-fold increase, while the population increased by more than 100,000 over the same period, from 320,000 in 1964 to 421,000 in 2013.

This was accompanied by a sharp rise in the standard of living, which hopefully will continue to increase in the future.

During the event held at the bank, Professor Oliver Friggieri gave a sober reassessment of the country’s history.

For most of the past 50 years, Malta found itself embroiled in the Duminku Mintoff – George Borg Olivier dichotomy. In fact, however, this split goes further: before it there was the Italian – British dichotomy and before that the dichotomy between what was local and what was foreign. We even classify our fruit as ‘ta Malta’ and ‘ta barra’.

It seems that we classify everything we see and everyone we meet as ‘with us’ or ‘with them’.

All this when Malta is so small that the Turks boasted they did not find it and Hitler boasted he could cancel it with a rubber. Nevertheless, this small island is a nation.

Malta is always on the verge: it is on the verge of the north and it is also on the verge of the south. Reggio Calabria and Sicily are to our north, but in reality they signify Italy’s south.

For many years, Malta agonised whether it was Semitic or Latin. It is the only country in the world with a Semitic language that is written in a Latin alphabet.

When St Paul was shipwrecked on our shores, the Maltese spoke their own language and were called in the Acts of the Apostles ‘barbaroi’.

The Maltese national anthem (about which more later) is composed of exclusively Arabic words but in a Latin context.

With the advent of the Knights of Malta, the European influence increased and expanded: whereas in Rhodes the buildings of the Knights had been Gothic, the buildings they created in Malta are resolutely Baroque.

The dominant spirit in an island people is suspicion of everyone and anything. The ‘others’ are the foreigners. The unifying factor is religion.

But some key words in the Maltese form of Christianity are pure Arabic – Alla for God, tewba for penance, and so on.

The Maltese mentality is that of a people long used to being subordinate. And that of being perennially engaged in conflict with the other side (‘pika’). Even today we have inherited this mentality: everything that had some enjoyment in it has been spoilt. It is, in other words, an inferiority complex we have not shaken off.

The very way in which the Innu Malti was born is an example of all this. For a long time, Malta had no national anthem. It was when, a few years after Malta was given its first Parliament, a doctor, Robert Samut, went to Edinburgh to specialise in medicine and one evening, while at dinner, his colleagues asked him to sing the Maltese  national anthem and he realised we did not have one. Being an amateur musician, he came home and wrote the music. So the music came before the words. It was only later that, through Professor Laferla, Dun Karm was approached to compose the words.

Malta’s Neolithic temples date back some 7,000 years, and yet, its best site, the Hypogeum, was about to be destroyed had it not been for Temi Zammit who stopped construction work and preserved the site for future generations.

There have even been people who doubted whether St Paul was shipwrecked here or some other island.

Nearer our time, the Maltese were split between those who supported Borg Olivier and those who supported Mintoff, and later those who supported Fenech Adami. Prof. Friggieri spoke to all three and each had words of respect for his antagonist.

One day at Mqabba, he entered the church on the feast of the Assumption and noticed a huge chandelier, which was lit, and next to it a smaller chandelier that was not. He asked a woman next to him the reason for this. She answered that the unlit chandelier belonged to ‘the others’.

In our villages, the Madonna has to split herself between warring factions.

In Gozo there are the Astra and Aurora clubs and visitors are almost pressed to side with one or the other.

What kind of Malta are we leaving our children? It is said that today there are no less than 100 different races in Malta. Malta’s common features are making way for small cells.

Malta is a country of builders. The Maltese have erected temples and reused parts of others. They have also built rubble walls and giren that are bound together without cement. The quarries in Malta are among the country’s most productive sites. The Maltese understand stone and all that it signifies.

Although mostly illiterate, the Maltese came together and attacked the far superior French. They were led by two people – Mikiel Anton Vassalli and Dun Mikiel Xerri: one can say that the former was the forerunner of the Labour Party and the other the forerunner of the Nationalist Party. Napoleon fell foul of the Maltese when he targeted what the Maltese loved most – their churches.

Since then, Malta has been split between politicians who offer jobs and saints who offer heaven. The antagonism between political parties has developed into antagonism between saints. Maltese festas symbolise Maltese identity but this is mostly a split identity. Today, the churches have become like museums and the antagonism in now between political parties. At the same time, the Germans and the Italians have come together whereas we in Malta are still split.

When people who had been exiled from Italy found refuge in Malta, they brought with them ideas about statehood and democracy. Maltese political parties owe their beginnings to this period. What was later to become the Nationalist Party would have wished Malta to be closer to Italy due to the common cultural heritage, but Italy’s entry into the war put paid to all this.

Malta obtained independence from the British when other countries, such as India, had enjoyed theirs since 1947. At that time, many thought that the Maltese, if left to their own devices, would butcher each other.

The closest Malta came to a civil war was in the 1980s. Prof. Friggieri said he had been at Tal-Barrani (when a Nationalist crowd tried to make its way to Zejtun to hold a meeting) and he well remembers Guido de Marco, wearing a bullet-proof vest, haranguing the crowd and the truck he was on (with Eddie Fenech Adami) facing Zejtun but the truck was going backwards, as was the crowd.

It may well be that there would not be a Malta unless there was antagonism.

Beyond this, the Maltese have always shown great signs of a people that lives by its brains, a small people, most of the time subservient to another people, most of the time illiterate, and yet always adapting what it imported from the dominant country or culture and twisting and turning it and making it uniquely Maltese.

Joseph Said, chairman of MaltaPost, spoke about the significance of the joint product and on the collaboration between the two institutions.

The set went on sale from the Central Bank of Malta and MaltaPost branches on 15 May. Further information about this and other numismatic products is available from the bank’s website www.centralbankmalta.org.