Malta’s Letters to the Editor: The Tiny Island’s Mightiest Public Square

Letters to the editor – September 20, 2025
By Hot Malta Staff

Valletta’s morning light had barely dried the overnight drizzle when the first bundle of Friday’s Times of Malta landed on the counter of Serafino’s kiosk at the Upper Barrakka. By 06:15, the fold-out page opposite the sports headlines was already dotted with coffee rings: readers had turned to the letters page before the obituaries—an island ritual older than the Triton Fountain. Today, however, the column carried an extra crackle. Fourteen letters, two poems and one cartoon filled the space normally reserved for polite grumbling about potholes in Naxxar. Together, they read like a national pulse check seven weeks before the budget speech and only days after Malta’s EuroPride bid was confirmed for 2027.

The most shared letter online came from 19-year-old Kim Borg of Żabbar, whose open apology to her grandmother—“Nanna, I’m sorry I called your village feasts ‘boomer fireworks’”—went viral before lunch. In 240 words, Borg stitched together generational tension, environmental guilt and a plea to keep the petard tradition alive “but maybe with biodegradable cartridges”. By 14:00, #BoomerFireworks was trending island-wide, Heritage Malta had invited her to curate a TikTok series, and two fireworks factories in Għaxaq politely offered tours “so she understands the chemistry before the chemistry kills us”.

Borg’s letter illustrates how the letters page has become Malta’s unofficial parliament: quicker, cheaper and often more representative than the real one. Speaker Anġlu Farrugia can convene committees till the cows come home, but nothing beats seeing your surname in 10-point Times New Roman to feel you’ve been heard. “It’s the last truly public square we have left,” says Prof. Josianne Hili, media ethnographer at the University of Malta. “Facebook arguments collapse into filter bubbles; the letters page still forces Jacob and Moses, Nationalist and Labour, hunter and birdwatcher to share the same rectangle of newsprint.”

This week’s rectangle also carried rawer stuff. A Gozitan mother of three wrote to complain that the Gozo General Hospital’s paediatric ward still has only one nebuliser, “a situation unchanged since my eldest, now 14, was a toddler”. The hospital’s CEO replied on the same page—another novelty introduced by editor-in-chief Herman Grech—promising two new machines “within ten days” and publishing the procurement order number. By Monday, NGOs were sharing screenshots of the order like receipts from a satisfied customer, a transparency triumph that no ministerial press release could rival.

Then came the letter that made every café from Sliema to Siġġiewi hum: retired architect Edward Said (no relation) proposed turning the abandoned Ta’ Qali stadium ramp into “a linear vineyard” whose wine could finance youth sports scholarships. By Saturday, ARMS Ltd had already calculated water tariffs, and a delegation from the Malta Wine Producers’ Association was pacing the concrete with moisture meters. “Only in Malta,” tweeted PN MP Eve Borg Bonello, “does an idea scribbled over breakfast reach feasibility studies before the toast gets cold.”

Letters pages elsewhere may be grey with grievance, but Malta’s functions as a national suggestion box precisely because the country is small enough for follow-through. When a Msida resident complained last year that the new bike lane ended abruptly in a garbage skip, the mayor cycled there the next morning; by the weekend, the skip had sprouted a mural of a heron. Scale breeds accountability, and the letters page is the ledger.

Culturally, the ritual harks back to the knights’ bandi nailed to church doors—public notices that mixed edict with gossip. The language has swapped Latin for Maltinglish, but the DNA is identical: a vertical conversation between authority and citizen, re-read aloud in barbershops and band clubs. Even migrants newly arrived from Eritrea know the drill; 12% of this week’s submissions came from non-Maltese names, the highest proportion on record. Their letters—asking why ID cards still list “colour” or praising the free Feast of St Michael fireworks—are redefining what “local” means.

Community impact is measurable. A 2024 University study found that letters to the editor trigger public action 38% of the time, compared with 9% for tweets. The reason, says co-author Dr Lara Sammut, is “the editorial filter: if an argument survives sub-editing, it already carries perceived legitimacy”. In other words, the gatekeepers of ink matter more than the gatekeepers of Wi-Fi.

As the midday sun glints off Valletta’s limestone and tourists photograph the very kiosk that dispenses these weekly missiles, Serafino tears open tomorrow’s bundle. Inside, next to the classifieds, a blank rectangle waits: 40 centimetres of column space that could birth Malta’s next policy, festival or family reconciliation. Write in by noon Wednesday; the nation is listening.