Malta’s Favourite Blood Sport: Inside the September 17 Letters Avalanche

Letters to the editor – September 17, 2025
By Hot Malta Staff

Valletta’s morning sun had barely hit the honey-coloured stones of Republic Street when the first email landed in our inbox. By 09:30, the digital pile numbered 47; by deadline, 123. In a country where the population could fit inside a medium-sized Italian stadium, the letter-to-the-editor remains the national sport—cheaper than lotto, faster than festa fireworks, and twice as loud. Today’s haul carried the usual Maltese cocktail: indignation, nostalgia, and that stubborn, lyrical hope that somebody, somewhere, is still listening.

The most forwarded letter came from 82-year-old Ġorġ (“no surname please, my children have employers”). Writing in Maltese peppered with English financial jargon, he accused the new Gozo tunnel contractors of “turning our sister island into a Swiss cheese with EU funds.” Within minutes the post had 600 shares and a thread that veered from geological data to someone’s nanna’s ricotta recipe. Welcome to Malta, where infrastructure debates are family affairs.

Cultural significance
Letters pages have been Malta’s unofficial parliament since 1839, when the first Gazetta di Malta invited citizens to “address the Governor in civil terms.” Then, it was shipyard pay and cholera pits; today, it’s cruise-ship emissions and the price of pastizzi. Yet the grammar of complaint remains unchanged: the polite salutation (“Sir, with due respect”), the dagger of sarcasm (“perhaps the Minister’s GPS is still set to 2013”), and the sign-off that sounds like a court bow (“Trusting in your impartiality”). In a nation that spent centuries forbidden to speak politics in public, the letter page is still the safest balcony from which to hang protest bunting.

Community impact
At 11:00, we took the pulse in Café Cordina. Retired teacher Rita Sammut had printed today’s batch and was annotating them in red biro. “This one about over-development in Qawra? I’m sending it to my local council. We’re 3,000 residents; if half of us write, that’s a quorum with a stamp.” Her friend, 19-year-old IT student Liam, confessed he never buys the paper but scrolls the letters on Facebook. “It’s like TikTok comments, but with better spelling and more priests.” Their table proves the format’s strange democracy: octogenarians and teens arguing across the same URL.

Hot Malta’s editors also received three handwritten envelopes—one on Basildon Bond paper scented with the classic Maltese mixture of talc and cupboard dust. Inside, Dolores Cachia, 74, of Sliema, appealed for traffic-calming on the Strand. She included a watercolour sketch of the promenade circa 1968, when “the only congestion was priests on bicycles.” We photographed the painting and posted it; within an hour Transport Malta replied promising “studies.” Dolores rang to say her neighbour had already offered to frame the tweet. Incremental? Yes. Satisfying? Absolutely.

The darker notes
Not every letter ends with pastizzi. One anonymous contributor described working two full-time jobs and still being unable to afford rent. Another, a Gozitan teenager, wrote of depression exacerbated by the 4 a.m. freight ferry horn—“a daily reminder my future is leaving on that boat.” We forwarded both to NGOs; one has since arranged free counselling. The page may be ink and pixels, but the fallout is flesh.

The satirical edge
Maltese humour skewered today’s targets with precision. A certain “Dun Karmenu ta’ Twitter” composed a hymn to the new metro plans: “Give us this day our daily underground, and forgive us our carbon emissions, as we forgive those who emit against us.” By lunchtime someone had set it to guitar and uploaded a cover on TikTok. Even Infrastructure Malta shared it, adding a sweating-emoji. Self-awareness? Or clever PR? Either way, the joke stings because the truth is tuneful.

Conclusion
As the church bells of Valletta struck noon, the letters kept coming—some in CAPS LOCK rage, others in the measured cadences of people who still believe words can reroute cranes and temper concrete. In a country accelerating at gigabit speed, the letter to the editor remains the stubborn handbrake, the civic equivalent of a lace curtain lifted so the neighbour can see the mess. Long may it flap.