'Strada Stretta: Aktar stejjer mit-triq li darba xeghlet il-Belt'

Author: George Cini

Self-published / 2021

Pages: 196

The latest estimate for the resident population of Valletta, dated three years ago, was of some 5,100.

The estimate for the population in 1950 was 20,000, some four times what it is today.

When visiting the capital, one gets the impression that it is so crowded with people that movement is difficult, especially with tables and chairs occupying much of the space. But facts are facts and numbers are numbers. 

This book, like the ones before it, does not have a real timeline but tells of Strada Stretta in the memories of the people who accepted to be interviewed by the author, which works around the 1950s.

The Valletta it speaks about is the 20,000 Valletta I was speaking about. A Valetta still carrying the scars of World War II but with a hugely dense population crammed into tenements especially in the lower reaches of the city, with families with normally upward of five children crammed into one or two rooms.

The situation became even more acute in the Mandragg and the Due Balle areas, in other words the Strada Stretta area.

We normally think of this area in function of the British servicemen and their entertainment requirements when the Street was known as The Gut.

But this book, and those before it, tell about the Maltese who peopled the Street, as bar owners first, as dancing and serving girls and as cooks and food providers. And about their interlocking families.

They fought and bickered of course but they helped and defended each other too.

Today, only a remnant remains and only a shadow of that Valletta. The book tells how the depopulation began - first, ironically enough, when the Qorti t'Isfel was relocated to join the other court. Then when government departments moved out of Valletta, like the Public Library, and others.

And especially when the Suq tal-Belt was moved out of Valletta by Mintoff. The Suq, dirty and old-fashioned as it was, was the soul of Valletta. Its modern incarnation today is no comparison.

The book shows how the food industry involved many Valletta families. There were many bakeries, many in the cellars underneath buildings, some belonging to other houses (it was like that, too). Burning every little bit of wood they could find.

But each had his own special recipe which he proudly claimed was unlike any other. All that has been lost now. All we get is supermarket-imported food.

The Valletta families have mostly moved out, away from small crammed houses with steps and rooms at all levels and cold unheated rooms.

Only those in the new housing estates can call themselves lucky. But that's a tiny part of the 1950s population. That has gone forever.

That was, the book tells us, the Mutumallu world, the sort of Godfather of the Strada Stretta world. But one who stayed open at all hours and had chorus girls and waiters crowding after work for his cheap fare.

The book has a very small part that is devoted to Balzunetta, the Floriana extension of Strada Stretta, so to speak.

I remember those days, from the Seminary, today's Curia was just across the road and in the late 1960s, when the Fleet came in, the nights were alive with music and song.

The book also has a fleeting reference to the rumour that the King of England had left a son behind him and this unacknowledged progeny ended up playing for Floriana FC.