Last week Pope Leo visited Barcelona as part of his visit to Spain.
The reason for his visit was to commemorate the centenary from the death 100 years earlier of the architect Antoni Gaudi, the genius architect of the Sagrada Familia church, and to inaugurate the Tower of Christ which will be the highest point of the church but which typically Gaudi wanted to be one metre short of the top of God's creation in the surrounding mountains.
Gaudi, who is in line to be declared a Blessed, died 100 years ago when he was run over by a car. His identification took days because he was dressed as a poor man and had no identification on him.
His church, the Sagrada Familia, despite being visited by successive Popes, is still incomplete.
Meanwhile, thousands of kilometres away, another centenary was being celebrated.
In the island of Gozo they were celebrating 100 years from when two important persons, including my distant relative, Bishop Pietro Pace, petitioned Queen Victoria to let them rename Rabat, the agglomeration of crooked streets and houses huddled together beneath the Cittadella, to Victoria in honour of her jubilee.
Thus it has remained - the Gozitans and Maltese among themselves when speaking in Maltese call it Rabat but on official documents and with foreigners it is Victoria.
When I dared suggest we all go back to Rabat, all hell broke loose. One woman even accused me of wanting to go back to Arab times. She preferred to keep the colonial name. The Gozo Region head suggested in jest we ought to rename Valletta to Sceberras as the area was called when it was a bare promontory and nobody was living on it.
A simple research would show that other cities, countries, lakes, etc did have their name changed over the past years but it was always from the colonial name to a vernacular one -- Rhodesia to Zimbabwe, etc - but never in the opposite direction. Gozo's Rabat is the only exception.
What's in a name, many might ask.
Were it not for one simple fact: in the coming days the name of the European City of Culture (ECoC) for 2031 which has been allocated to Malta is due to be announced and Rabat/Victoria is the only contender. The other preliminary applicant from Malta, Vittoriosa (another one with a double name, but which applied under the Maltese name of Birgu) failed in the selection process.
The confirmation that Rabat/Victoria will be the ECoC of 2031 is expected to be announced in the coming days and some known faces are already circling around, attracted no doubt by the prestige but surely too by the European funds that ECoC can unlock. Valletta, ECoC for 2018, had greatly benefitted from the experience.
I was shocked to see that the official document on Victoria carried a photo of Mgarr Harbour instead.
Perhaps the recent change of Minister of Culture had something to do with this selection process, or perhaps not.
When we joined the EU, at least that was my impression, we hoped the EU would get us out of our parochial insular mentality to a broader European dimension but once again we seem to have failed. Some traits of nationalism and parochialism are too ingrained to eradicate. So too we may be about to consecrate an acknowledged relic of colonial times to be a European Capital of Culture.
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