Raising Standards

The Malta Independent on Sunday 

  
My work took me to Paris last week. Always a pleasure to visit the most beautiful and most romantic city in the world inhabited by the most unfriendly people.

There I had to drink 10 euro cappuccinos, had to fight to get a hotel room one fourth the size of my bedroom for double the price of the average five star hotel room price in Malta and got wet most of the times I went out. Yet the place was bustling with visitors from all over the world.

It aches me every time I return from an overseas trip to realise how sadly we are missing to exploit our potential. Because like Malta there is no other country in the world. We can boast of the largest concentration of priceless monuments unmatched in any European city. What you see in Malta in three days you will not see anywhere else in the world.

As Eddie Aquilina’s latest publication says Malta was there before history started. Most other places where tourists fall over themselves to visit, be they Rome, Florence, Venice Paris, Bruges or Bath can put a date on most of their offerings. We can only put an estimate of how long before history our treasures were born.

And those treasures we can put a date upon, like the City of Valletta, should be an attraction of culture and history as much as any other European City. So why, I surmise can’t we get the same quality of tourists that the big cities do? We can’t we get the tourist who spends the Lm100 a day rather than Lm 50 a week staying in all inclusive hotels and probably getting double money’s worth by taking undue ownership of the operating equipment and supplies that give comfort in the hotel room?

The reply to this hits me every morning as I stroll to my office from the Floriana car park past City Gate. This Valletta which should be one of our jewels attracting quality tourism that can really appreciate its bastions, its harbours, its museums and its unique Cathedral, is instead a shameful exposition of our incompetence. A masterpiece of our shabbiness and of our lack of standards which make genuine treasures look like costume jewellery.

Valletta must be the only capital city in the civilised world where each time you walk towards it you have to negotiate your life and perform gymnastics to avoid being hit by a bus as you approach the Triton fountain again as you cross from the Triton fountain to the Valletta City Gate Bridge.

The entrance to our majestic city which should set the scene and flavour for what lies behind the walls instead sets the scene with the most repulsive setting. What on earth has kept us from using a couple of million liri from the huge debt that we have amassed in order to build an underground bus terminus in Floriana with underground walkways and escalators for those that prefer to be carried and giving the rest of us who prefer to walk over-ground the joy of entering our majestic city without risking our life, permitting us to fix our eyes on the beauty of the bastions rather than on the bus we have to come to terms with to keep live.

Once you are ready to say a short prayer for having made it safely through approaching and departing buses and gained access to the City Gate bridge, then the majesty of the bastions is insulted by the bazaar that welcomes visitors over the bridge and under City Gate. A line of white taxis and a handful of pedlar’s stands generally obstruct the approach and make our European city look more like a Turkish bazaar. Certainly our City entrance deserves better if not by replacing the Gate to something more architecturally suitable for a fortified city, at least in keeping the approach clean and landscaped. Taxis and pedlars should have ample opportunity to expose their wares elsewhere. And one need not look too far for this.

Freedom Square is one of the few open spaces left in Valletta. How can we tolerate the confusion of parking that reigns in this square and in the ruins of the Opera House? A taxi stand and a few pedlar’s stand at the edges of the square offering handicraft, arts and such like services would add life and colour. But this has to be properly organised to keep the place attractive and easy to walk through. Valletta needs no car parks. Car should just stay out permitting visitors to enjoy the City without traffic and parking confusion.

And if we can’t find the money to re-build the Opera House lets make most of what’s left by calling it what it is rather than turn it into the most wasteful car park in the world. What is keeping us from building a soft space frame ceiling over the ruins and turn the place into an Opera House museum with pictures and relics showing he glory of the opera house a it stood before it was hit by enemy fire during last war?

It is all a matter of standards. We have no standards. We had to wait for EU accession to embellish the Upper Barrakka from where visitors can feast their eyes on one of the most scenic views anywhere in Europe; a view that explains how the depth and protection offered by our Grand Harbour has attracted civilisations to Malta from the time even before history began. It is an insult for so much fuss to be made on a project which should be run of the mill.

And lest I be accused of being partisan my intelligence is equally offended by that monstrous stone opposite the law courts to commemorate the re-paving of Republic Street by a Labour administration in 1998. I could not find any such plaques or monuments in Champs Elysees or any of the Boulevards surrounding l’Arc de Triomphe.

Just imagine what quality tourists make of us when they see that monstrous stone to commemorate the re-paving our Malta’s Main Street, something which should be done as a matter of course every so many years to keep it fresh and attractive. They would easily conclude that if we make so much fuss about an ordinary refurbishing job than we have no standards and it shows.

May be it is because I am influenced by the teachings and practices of the late Tumas Fenech who never wanted an official opening or plaque on any of his hotel projects. Ministers who would have made an investor’s life hell to get the project on the road then would expect the limelight of an official opening. For Tumas the standards were not in the plaques but in the commercial success of the project giving fair return on investment, offering employment to hundreds and adding wealth to the national economy. Such standards show in the quality of projects like Portomaso which is a window of what Malta could look like if we were to raise our standards.