Malta’s Letters to the Editor Ignite Change: From Fireworks Safety to Anti-Racism Vigils

Letters to the editor – September 21, 2025
By Hot Malta Staff

Sliema’s dawn cafés were already humming when the Times of Malta’s weekend edition hit the doorsteps. By 7 a.m., the paper’s letters page—three crisp columns under the fold—had become the islands’ most democratic parliament. Between sips of ħobż-biż-żejt and iced coffee, Maltese from Valletta to Gozo leaned over wrought-iron tables to argue, laugh and occasionally cry at what their neighbours had written. In a country where everyone knows everyone, the letters page is our national group chat, and today’s instalment felt like the archipelago’s pulse made ink.

Leading the pack was 82-year-old Ċensu Galea of Żejtun, a retired dockyard riveter whose copperplate handwriting has appeared on the page since 1971. “Dear Editor,” he began, “when did our festa fireworks become louder than our conscience?” Galea reminded readers that this weekend marks the 40th anniversary of the infamous 1985 Mqabba warehouse blast that killed six fireworks makers. He urged village committees to donate the cost of one aerial shell to a new fund for occupational-safety courses at MCAST. Within hours, #BoomForABetterFuture was trending, and the Mqabba każin had already pledged €2,000. By sunset, the fund stood at €17,350—proof that a stamped letter can still outrun Facebook.

Beneath Galea’s plea, a younger voice: 24-year-old Kim Borg from St Paul’s Bay, who described herself as “a climate-anxious tenant on the 14th floor of a tuna-pen view”. Borg’s letter dismantled the myth that high-rise towers are “inevitable progress”. She attached a QR code linking to an interactive map she built in her MA thesis—every planned >15-storey project overlaid on the 1948 aerial survey. The visual shock was immediate: Sliema’s shoreline morphed into a bar graph. Readers delved in, shared screenshots, and by lunchtime both major political parties had issued cautious statements about “height moderation”. For a generation stereotyped as TikTok narcissists, Borg’s 220-word missile showed that data plus outrage still fits snugly between newsprint margins.

Not all letters carried heaviness. Marlene Camilleri, Gozitan mother of four, thanked the unknown stranger who paid her supermarket tab last Tuesday when her BOV app crashed. “You told the cashier, ‘Min jaf, jien nista’ nsib ruħi f’idejha hi għada,’” Camilleri wrote. “I dedicate my next għana verse to you.” The paper’s comment moderators later revealed that six different people had emailed claiming to be that stranger—each insisting on anonymity. In a country where deeds of kindness are currency, the letters page doubles as confession booth and thank-you note.

Yet the most shared letter came not from a Maltese pen but from a Nigerian-born nurse at Mater Dei. Valentine Okafor recounted being stopped by police in Buġibba and asked for ID while wearing scrubs on his way to a night shift. “I am the same man who held your nanna’s hand during her last COVID breath,” he wrote. “I did not become less Maltese in that corridor.” The letter exploded on WhatsApp groups; by 3 p.m. the Nurses’ Union announced a silent vigil outside the hospital, white scrubs only. Government sources tell Hot Malta that Internal Affairs will roll out mandatory bias-training for frontline officers starting October—policy born between the crossword and the weather forecast.

Why do these letters still matter in 2025, when every village has its own Discord server? Because Malta’s population density—1,380 souls per km²—means we live in each other’s pockets, yet paradoxically feel unheard. The letters page is the great leveller: pensioner and PhD student share equal column inches. Print circulation may be a quarter of what it was in 1995, but weekend pass-along readership remains above 200,000, equivalent to half the electorate. Politicians mine it for dog-whistle slogans; priests quote it in Sunday homilies; tourists treasure it as the most authentic souvenir after sunburn. When the islands feel like a cockpit of cranes and cruise-ship horns, the letters page is the slow food of civic life—fermented, flavourful, stubbornly local.

As the sun set over the Grand Harbour, the paper’s online comment section closed after 1,043 entries—record traffic for 2025. Sub-editors, already shaping Monday’s letters, confessed they had to triple their emoji-to-ink budget after readers demanded a “rolling tears” glyph for Okafor’s letter. Somewhere in Naxxar, a 12-year-old drafted her first note: “Dear Editor, my rabbit is lonely since dad works two jobs. Can we have a pet-friendly beach?” It won’t make tomorrow’s edition, but it will. Because in Malta, today’s diary entry is tomorrow’s headline, and the page always makes room for one more voice.

Hold the paper up to the light; you’ll see the watermark of a nation arguing with itself—and, occasionally, agreeing.