Suppressed Fortina report exposes Malta’s tourism-at-any-cost dilemma

Revealed: The ‘suppressed’ report at the heart of the Fortina deal
By Hot Malta Staff

Sliema’s iconic seafront promenade has always been a stage where Malta’s ambitions and contradictions collide: sun-bronzed joggers weave past 19th-century townhouses, while cranes swing over new glass towers that promise “five-star luxury” to buyers who may never live here. This week, however, the view from the Fortina Hotel’s terraced pools has become the backdrop for a very Maltese drama—one involving a confidential environmental report that regulators quietly shelved just weeks before a €160 million sale was signed.

The 73-page dossier, seen by Hot Malta and dated 14 March 2023, warns that the proposed 18-storey mixed-use extension “exceeds carrying capacity thresholds for traffic, heritage vista degradation and marine ecology” and recommends either a height reduction of four floors or a €4.2 million mitigation fund. Yet when the deal between Fortina Investments and Abu Dhabi-based Eagle Hills was announced in July, no mention was made of the report. Instead, Tourism Minister Clayton Bartolo hailed the project as “a catalyst for high-end tourism” that will create 500 jobs and “reposition Malta as the Monaco of the Med”.

Opposition MPs are now calling the omission “institutional gaslighting”. But on the ground, the reaction is more nuanced. “We’re not against progress, but we’re tired of being treated like children,” says 68-year-old Carmen Vella, who has sold ħobż biż-żejt from a kiosk opposite the hotel for four decades. “My grandchildren ask why the sea smells of diesel every August. Will another tower fix that?”

The Fortina site occupies a symbolic slice of Maltese memory. In 1978, Dom Mintoff’s government turned the colonial-era barracks into a holiday complex for workers, complete with red-flag beach umbrellas and week-long “workers’ fortnight” packages priced at 25c a day. Photos of factory machinists dancing the ż-żifna in the hotel ballroom still circulate on Facebook nostalgia groups. Today, the cheapest winter rate is €280 a night—more than a pensioner’s weekly income.

Cultural geographer Dr Josienne Sciberras argues that the suppressed report is part of a wider pattern. “Malta’s post-2013 economic model relies on what I call ‘tourism exceptionalism’—the belief that any obstacle, whether a heritage building or a scientific study, must yield to investor timelines,” she says. “When environmental assessments are sidelined, the message is that local identity is negotiable currency.”

The timing is politically toxic. Local councils across Malta are bracing for the introduction of a new fast-track planning route—dubbed the “Tal-Orlando clause” after the parliamentary secretary who piloted it—which allows Strategic Projects of National Importance (SPNIs) to bypass normal public consultation. Fortina’s owners have not applied under the new route, but sources inside the Planning Authority admit the project “ticks every box” should they choose to.

Down at the Sliema ferries, weekend paddle-boarders have already noticed darker sediment plumes. Marine biologist Alan Deidun, who co-authored the suppressed chapter on Posidonia oceanica meadows, says the proposed breakwater would smother 7,000m² of seagrass—equivalent to 15 basketball courts of carbon-absorbing habitat. “We calculated the economic value of that service at €1.3 million over ten years,” Deidun told Hot Malta. “But there is no column for that in the developer’s spreadsheet.”

What happens next could set a precedent. A judicial protest filed by NGO Friends of the Earth demands that the report be tabled in parliament and that the sale be suspended pending a new environmental impact assessment. Meanwhile, the hotel’s 300 staff remain in limbo. Housekeeper Maria Pace, who put two children through university on Fortina wages, worries the new owners will “bring in their own people”. “We gave this place our backs,” she says, wiping down a sun-lounger. “Will they give us theirs?”

As the sun sets behind Manoel Island, the answers feel as murky as the winter sea. One thing is clear: in Malta’s gold-rush skyline, the price of silence is no longer measured only in euros, but in the slow erosion of the very vistas we promise tourists money to see.