Xlendi Developers No-Show Sparks Uproar as Gozitans Vow to Save Bay

Watch: Objectors in uproar after Xlendi developers fail to show up for meeting
By our staff reporter

Gozitans packed the Xlendi parish hall last night expecting a long-promised explanation of how a boutique hotel could legally sprout nine storeys above the village’s skyline. Instead they found an empty table, two folded placards bearing the project’s logo, and a council chairwoman apologising for yet another no-show by the developers. Mobile-phone footage captured the moment the crowd realised the meeting was effectively over: a collective groan, then spontaneous chants of “Bżonn qabza! (We need to act!)” echoing off the stone walls.

The absconding trio—Valletta-registered SDM Developments, architect Ray Cachia Zammit and planning consultant Robert Musumeci—had twice requested the postponement, citing “travel difficulties”. Their lawyer sent a one-line email at 6:47 p.m. claiming “an unforeseen emergency abroad”. By 7:15 p.m. the hall was seething. “This is not just bad manners; it’s contempt for an entire village,” said 68-year-old fisherman Nenu Mercieca, whose family has moored boats in the inlet since the 1950s. Someone started a Facebook live-stream; within an hour 12,000 viewers—more than the population of Gozo itself—were watching elderly women wave placards painted with the iconic pink Xlendi bay at sunset, now stamped with the words “Hands Off!”.

Local context matters. Xlendi is not another St Julian’s in the making; it is a crescent of 17th-century fisherman houses curled around a fjord-like creek that empties to reveal a sandbar perfect for children’s first paddle. The proposed hotel would replace a disused 1970s holiday complex on the valley’s western slope, but at 32 m it would rise higher than the parish church dome, blocking the vista that Gozitans traditionally watch during the village festa fireworks in September. SDM’s own visualisations, leaked online, show a glass-and-concrete slab that dwarfs the terraced fields where elderly farmers still prune vine tendrils according to the phases of the moon.

Culturally, Xlendi is the place Maltese grandparents bring grandchildren for a first post-Easter dip, where courting couples share rabbit stew at candle-lit tables inches from lapping waves. “We are not against progress, but this scale erodes identity,” said 29-year-old chef Rebecca Spiteri, who returned from London to open a farm-to-table restaurant. “Cruise passengers already ask why every bay looks the same. If we concrete Xlendi, what will be left to photograph?”

The timing is explosive. Summer bookings are 18 % down on 2019, and Airbnb hosts fear bad publicity. Yet the developers’ silence may have backfired. Objectors collected 4,300 signatures in 48 hours—triple the number who voted in the last local council election. The Gozo Regional Development Authority, usually circumspect, issued an unusually blunt statement reminding applicants that “social licence is not optional”. Even the parish priest, Fr Joe Mizzi, weighed in, telling followers that “stewardship of creation is a Gospel imperative”, a phrase promptly printed on T-shirts sold outside the church.

Planning insiders say SDM is gambling on a fast-track environmental impact assessment before new EU nature directives bite in 2025. But the absence last night triggered procedural rules: the Environment & Resources Authority must now reopen consultation for a further 21 days, pushing any decision past the summer lull and into the teeth of an election season. “MPs hate voting towers when schools need repairs,” quipped one Labour strategist.

Back in the square, teenagers hung a bedsheet from the band club balcony: “You hid, we rise.” By midnight someone had strung fishing lights across the creek so the bay glowed amber, a silent rebuttal to the glossy render of a skyscraper nobody asked for. The developers may have stayed away, but the village they underestimated just turned a routine planning row into a national litmus test of whether Malta’s economic model can still bend to the people who call these islands home.

Conclusion: Xlendi’s empty-chair fiasco is more than a scheduling mishap; it is a snapshot of a country wrestling with the cost of its own success. If a quiet Gozitan creek can galvanise thousands, policy makers should note that the next election may be won or lost not in Valletta boardrooms, but in village halls where grandmothers wield smartphones like pitchforks. The developers’ silence spoke louder than any presentation: Maltese communities are no longer willing to trade heritage for height. The question now is whether the planning system will listen before the cranes move in.