Malta’s Letters to the Editor Ignite National Debate: Lampuki, Language and the Price of Rabbit

Letters to the editor – September 29, 2025
By Luke Caruana, Hot Malta staff writer

The Monday print run of Times of Malta may have landed on doorsteps at dawn, but by 8 a.m. the real conversation was already crackling on village benches from Valletta’s Republic Square to Għarb’s quiet pjazza. “Kemm għandna xi ngħidu llum!” laughed 72-year-old Ġorġina Pace, waving a dog-eared page at her neighbours. The reason? The letters to the editor—those stubborn, gloriously unfiltered rectangles of newsprint—had once again become the island’s most democratic barometer, and this week’s batch felt like a national pulse check ahead of Independence Day.

Malta’s love affair with the letter page is older than the George Cross. In 1942, a teenager called Ġużè Ellul Mercer warned of U-boat patterns; his letter was clipped by RAF Intelligence. Eighty-three years later, the stakes are different but the ritual is the same: write 200 fiery words, sign with your ID number, and watch the country argue over espresso. Yesterday’s haul—27 letters printed, 312 submitted—touched everything from cruise-ship smoke to the price of fenkata rabbits, yet three themes dominated: climate dread, cultural identity, and the cost of living that is nudging families back into three-generational households.

Climate dread arrived first. Dr. Ramona Falzon, a marine biologist from Sliema, described “a summer that refuses to leave,” noting that September seawater had hit 28.7 °C, “hot enough to poach a lampuki in its own ocean.” Her data rattled fishermen, who responded in the second edition with a joint letter signed by 14 captains. They warned that dolphinfish are migrating north earlier every year, threatening the traditional lampuki season that colours Maltese balconies with turquoise fishing crates each August. “If we lose the season, we don’t just lose income—we lose the festa of the sea,” wrote Carmel “Nenu” Vella, whose family has fished out of Marsaxlokk since 1890. By noon, hashtag #SaveLampuki was trending, and Parliamentary Secretary for Fisheries Rebecca Buttigieg had promised an emergency task-force meeting on Wednesday.

Cultural identity surfaced next, in a passionate exchange about the Maltese language. Prof. Oliver Friggieri’s short letter—barely 90 words—argued that the rise of English-only boutique hotels in Valletta amounts to “linguistic money-laundering.” Within hours, Facebook exploded with memes of tourists ordering “a plate of pastizzi, hold the vowels.” Yet beneath the jokes lies anxiety: census data released last week shows only 58 % of five-year-olds now speak Maltese at home, down from 82 % in 2005. “When we lose the language, we don’t just lose words—we lose the jokes our grandparents made while pruning the vines,” commented Etienne Pace (no relation to Ġorġina), a 19-year-old UoM student who started a TikTok series translating Maltese proverbs into Gen-Z slang. His most viral clip—“M’għandix ħniezrijiet ta’ qabdiliha” rendered as “I have zero crumbs of give-it-to-me energy”—has already amassed 400 k views, proving that the letters page still incubates cultural counter-moves.

The cost-of-living crisis provided the emotional crescendo. Miriam Saliba, a 34-year-old nurse from Żabbar, calculated that her monthly grocery bill has jumped €147 in twelve months, “the equivalent of 14 pastizzi a day.” She ended with a plea: “Can someone tell me how to explain to my six-year-old that rabbit is now birthday food?” The line struck such a chord that by evening, a spontaneous “Rabbit Solidarity” stall had popped up outside the parish church, selling discounted fenek donated by farmers in Żebbuġ. Organisers say every carcass was gone in 42 minutes; the €1,260 profit will buy school stationery for 70 children. In a heart-warming coda, the butchers of Qormi pledged a weekly “community rabbit” at cost price, prompting Archbishop Charles Scicluna to tweet: “The epistle of the people has become the Gospel of the marketplace.”

Why do Maltese still trust newsprint over the bottomless scroll of social media? Psychotherapist Anna Maria Cassar argues that the letters page offers “a slow-release capsule of national emotion.” Unlike the manic tempo of online feeds, editors curate, fact-check, and—crucially—force authors to own their words with a full name and town. “It’s accountability in an age of avatars,” she notes. That accountability ripples outward: MPs have confessed they skim the letters over breakfast before question time; Magistrate Gabriella Vella once cited a reader’s observation in a sentencing decision on illegal fishing.

Back in Għarb, Ġorġina folds the paper with reverence. “These pages are our parish without walls,” she smiles, as the church bell strikes noon. Around her, neighbours debate whether to propose a village referendum on rooftop solar panels—an idea lifted verbatim from today’s green-themed letter. By sunset, someone will have drafted the next 200-word missile, ready to post before the midnight deadline. And so the cycle continues: islanders writing themselves into history, one letter at a time, proving that Malta’s smallest public square still fits between margins of newsprint yet echoes louder than any algorithm.