Pete Buttigieg: ‘I remember buying The Times and a ħobża for dad’

Pete Buttigieg: ‘I remember buying The Times and a ħobża for dad’ – a Maltese son’s journey to the White House

By Martina Vella | Hot Malta

VALLETTA – When United States Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg told a Washington audience last week that “I remember buying The Times and a ħobża for dad,” Maltese ears from Mellieħa to Marsaxlokk pricked up. In one breath, the globe-trotting politician fused two of Malta’s most cherished rituals: the morning walk to the kiosk for The Times of Malta and the obligatory stop at the corner bakery for a crusty sourdough ħobża. For locals, it was more than a nostalgic nod—it was proof that the Mediterranean’s smallest nation can leave the largest fingerprints on the world stage.

Buttigieg’s Maltese roots run through his late father, Joseph Anthony Buttigieg II, who emigrated from Hamrun to the United States in the 1970s. The elder Buttigieg, a renowned scholar of Antonio Gramsci, never severed the umbilical cord to the islands. Every summer he returned with his Indiana-born children in tow, turning Triq il-Kbira into a classroom where Pete learned to haggle in Maltese and to distinguish a proper ftira from supermarket imposters.

“Those mornings with Dad were sacred,” Buttigieg recalled during an online fundraiser for Maltese-American cultural initiatives. “We’d leave Nanna’s flat in Floriana, dodge the kamikaze traffic near the Triton Fountain, and head for the kiosk by the law courts. The vendor knew us—he’d fold the paper so the sports section peeked out for Dad and slip me a ħobża tal-ħelu while we waited.”

For older Maltese who watched the Buttigieg boys grow up on the parched streets of Hamrun, the anecdote is a heart-warming reminder that emigration is a two-way street. “We used to tease little Pete that he sounded like a character from ‘Simpatici’ when he tried to speak Maltese,” chuckles 72-year-old Carmel Spiteri, still tending his kiosk beneath the honey-stone balconies of Triq Nofs-in-Nhar. “Now look at him—running U.S. transport policy like it’s a village festa committee, but with better roads.”

Local cultural observers say the story taps into a deeper truth about identity in a diasporic nation. “Malta exports people the way France exports wine,” explains Dr. Maria Attard, director of the University of Malta’s Institute for Islands and Small States. “When someone like Buttigieg references the ħobża ritual, he’s validating a shared cultural grammar. It tells Maltese everywhere that our micro-practices matter on the macro stage.”

The timing is significant. Last month, the Maltese government launched the “Re-Connect Malta” programme, offering citizenship pathways and business grants to second- and third-generation Maltese abroad. Buttigieg’s shout-out has already triggered a spike in queries at Maltese consulates in Chicago and New York. “We’ve seen a 40 % jump in requests for birth-certificate extracts,” confirms consular officer Kurt Zahra. “People want to reclaim the ħobża they never knew they missed.”

On the ground in Hamrun, the impact is visible. Café Jubilee has renamed its breakfast platter “The Mayor Pete” (two eggs, ħobża tal-Malti, kunserva, and a miniature copy of The Times). Sales have surged 60 % since the interview aired. Meanwhile, St. Cajetan’s parish is planning a special Mass in September to honour Joseph Buttigieg’s legacy, followed by a screening of Pete’s 2020 campaign documentary—subtitled, naturally, in Maltese.

Critics argue that romanticising a simple bread roll risks glossing over the harsher realities of emigration and the brain drain that still haunts the islands. Yet even they admit the symbolism is potent. “The ħobża isn’t just carbs,” says Labour MP Randolph De Battista. “It’s resilience, continuity, and the taste of limestone dust on your tongue when you bite into it straight from the oven. If that memory can land on CNN, maybe our kids will stop thinking success only happens somewhere else.”

As the sun sets over the Grand Harbour, casting terracotta light on the fortifications, it’s easy to see why Buttigieg clings to those mornings. In a world of bullet trains and broadband, the slow shuffle to the kiosk and bakery remains Malta’s quiet rebellion against forgetting. And somewhere between the smell of yeast and newsprint, a small island keeps teaching superpowers how to walk before they run.