Malta’s Sunday Secret: How a Free Magazine Inside The Sunday Times Became the Island’s Cultural Glue

FREE MAGAZINE WITH ‘THE SUNDAY TIMES’: THE MALTESE WEEKEND RITUAL THAT BINDS A NATION

Every Sunday at dawn, the familiar thud of the newspaper bundle hits the doorstep from Żurrieq to St Julian’s, heralding more than just the week’s headlines. Nestled inside The Sunday Times of Malta is the island’s best-loved free magazine – a glossy, 48-page cultural passport that has quietly become the Maltese answer to a national coffee-table tradition. From village band clubs to rooftop gin bars in Valletta, the magazine is unwrapped, debated, dog-eared and eventually filed in kitchen drawers alongside nanna’s qagħaq tal-ħelu recipes. In a country where 92 % of adults read a newspaper each week (Eurobarometer 2023), this free supplement is less “bonus content” and more communal glue.

The supplement’s origins lie in the early 1990s, when Times of Malta editors realised that Maltese families – already lingering over kafè fit-tuff and pastizzi – wanted something weightier than classifieds. “We wanted to slow the Sunday down,” recalls former editor Louisa Attard. “Not just newsprint, but a tactile break from the week’s frenzy.” Three decades on, the magazine has evolved from black-and-white property listings to a technicolour kaleidoscope of long-form features, heritage walks, restaurant reviews and cheeky horoscopes that even sceptical fishermen in Marsaxlokk swear by.

Local context is everything. Turn to the centrefold and you’ll find a pull-out map of hidden coves in Għar Lapsi annotated by freedivers; flip to the back and there’s a guide to festa fireworks safety penned by a Senglea pyrotechnician who learned the craft from his granddad. During the pandemic, the magazine’s “Balcony Birdwatch” series encouraged locked-down households to spot kestrels from their rooftops – a small act of solidarity that turned isolation into shared adventure. “It reminded us we were all looking at the same sky,” says Nadine Micallef from Gżira, whose photo of a blue rock thrush was printed on the cover.

Culturally, the supplement has become a curator of Maltese identity in real time. When Valletta was European Capital of Culture in 2018, the magazine dedicated 12 pages to urban sketchers drawing the city’s baroque balconies; the sketches later toured as an exhibition at Spazju Kreattiv. More recently, a feature on Gozitan cheesemaker Marilù Portelli sparked a 200-strong queue at her Nadur stall the following Sunday – proof that ink still moves feet. Even political discourse bends to its sway: a 2022 investigation into coastal over-development prompted a spontaneous clean-up dive at Għajn Tuffieħa organised by readers who met in the comments section beneath the online version.

The community impact is tangible. Every first Sunday of the month, the magazine partners with local NGOs for “Swap & Read”, pop-up stalls outside parish churches where readers exchange last week’s copy for second-hand Maltese literature. Proceeds fund literacy classes for migrants at the Marsa Open Centre. Meanwhile, secondary schools use the youth-focused “Kif Qedin?” column – written entirely in colloquial Maltenglish – as classroom debating material. “My students argue about whether ‘ħobż biż-żejt’ is better with or without kunserva,” laughs Maria Vella, an English teacher in Hamrun. “They’re learning rhetoric through rabbit stew.”

Critics argue that print is dying, yet the magazine marches on, buoyed by advertisers ranging from boutique wineries to village hardware stores. A QR code on the last page now links to a Spotify playlist curated by the same DJs interviewed inside, bridging analogue and digital. The secret, says current editor Karl Schembri, is that the magazine never forgets its audience is literally family. “We’re printed in Malta, designed in Malta, and read aloud by Maltese grandparents to their nanniet. You can’t fake that intimacy.”

As church bells ring out across the harbour and the scent of ftira wafts from neighbourhood bakeries, the ritual repeats. Over 60,000 copies later, the free magazine tucked inside The Sunday Times remains the island’s most democratic slice of culture – one that costs nothing but an hour of your Sunday, and gives back an entire archipelago of stories.