Beyond the publicity blurb of espressos spiked with a tot of chatty people-watching; beyond the gargling coffee machines and the lawyers’ I’m-so-busy-walk; beyond the fashionably-restored apartments with magical views; beyond the brute commerce of jabbing elbows during January sales; beyond the Città Nuova’s staggering beauty and its palaces rising with a poised, strong baroque character of oval fanlights and timber balconies delicately perched on carved consoles; beyond all this, Valletta is a reality only lived by its residents, and occasionally scratched on the surface by some lost tourist or a theatre-goer desperate for a parking space, who will then walk away, muttering the proverbial, ‘something must be done about Valletta’, a resolve which is quickly shelved and forgotten.
There, where the Notte Bianca lights flicker and die, survive the capital’s divisions; groups of Beltin huddled in historic dwellings unequally divided into living quarters, or in social housing which is anything but social. At first glance, the men shifting their weight outside dodgy bars fume with testosterone and look like they might rot your teeth for no apparent reason; and the women look underdressed. Yet their new, affluent neighbours coming in from outside the city insist that the locals would give you their heart on a silver platter. New residents, most of who are professionals or with a tertiary education, are accepted as part of the community, but only if they contribute and get involved in football, carnival and parish feasts.
There are three parishes in Valletta. And there are three social housing areas; inner city suburbs where Rankin’s Inspector Rebus would not be out of a job for long. Apart from the smaller, vice-breeding areas of the Camarata and the Baviera, the larger concentrations are the Archipelago, or as it is known, l-Arcipiergu, the Duwi Balli and the Mandragg.
As in all towns and villages in Malta, there is a lot of pika between l-Arcipiergu, the Duwi Balli and the Mandragg. During the parish feast, each community tries to outdo the others. Arguments occasionally flare up. Yet they quickly calm down, in honor of two great unifiers which bring the Beltin together to pulling the same rope.
The first unifier is carnival. Year after year, the men and women behind the masks hail mostly from Valletta. And behind King Carnival’s smile, it is hard work all year round in exchange of five days of revelry. It is mostly work against all odds. From weeks before, the locals gather in the lower part of St Elmo. The abandoned barracks and what was once the Fort’s parade ground become the carnival backstage; a quasi-biblical backdrop to colourful Trojan Horses painstakingly built bit by bit. While companies sew costumes and practice dance steps, the different parts are heaved from the workshops four floors down to street level, where the floats are assembled.
The dilettanti have a passionate intensity for carnival that brings them together. People from the l-Arcipiergu, the Duwi Balli and the Mandragg work in Sisyphean toil. They help each other, cover shifts and only go home to shower and eat. The most hardcore of them work all night, sleep in the stores and rarely go home. It is a collective effort against the natural elements and against the cold and damp barracks; the impending doom of rain; the primitive set-ups; and the rats gnawing at the floats at night. Every float is a victory for the Valletta people. They are the kings of the Sceberras Hill.
A trip to the Salinos training ground during the week or to Ta’ Qali on a weekend is enough to realise how football for Valletta is what unites people from all three parishes. Earlier this year, when Marsaxlokk won the local championship, the number of supporters during their last match which saw them crowned champions could not match the numbers the Lily Whites, out of the running for the league, attracted whenever they played. And seven years ago, when Valletta played Barry Town in the first round of the Champions League, two coaches full of Valletta supporters living in London made the trip to Wales.
For the Beltin, football is what unites them. It is, not only for the citizens inside the walls but also for their relatives displaced and living outside the city, a means to connect; a watering of their roots. Football is what makes them brush aside their belonging to a particular area, and come together as one group, the Tal-Palestina, to puff their chest in pride; sing along to, ‘Lil tal-Belt, hadd ma jista’ ghalina,’ and celebrate their terroir.
Football itself is a metaphor of how, in the face of adversity, the Beltin come together against a common foe. Between 1886 and 1919, there were about 14 football teams in Valletta, each hailing from a different quarter. By 1935, the two biggest teams were the St Paul’s and the Prestons, and it was these that in 1943 were amalgamated to form the Valletta F.C.
Yet what gives the Beltin their unique identity and their collective sense of belonging is their living in one of the most concentrated historic areas in the world, where 320 monuments are clustered in 55 hectares and enclosed by Laparelli’s 100-metre high fortification. The Beltin live in a monument. Yet it is a monument of stone.
In his study, Ambivalent Europeans: Ritual, Memory and the Public Sphere in Malta [Routledge], Jon Mitchell recounts a public meeting held in 1993 to discuss the decline of the Capital. In the middle of proceedings, ‘a man appeared at the door of the hall and began shouting abuse at the panel. Their actions and opinions were typical of the egotism and arrogance of their type, he argued […]. They were only interested in monuments and politics – not in people’s lives’.
The Beltin struggle under the weight of their city’s history, and their lives assume secondary importance. The residents of the most important city on the islands are often marginalised, in favour of the buildings. And it is only the buildings in the upper, commercial areas that are lighted up in the regeneration spotlight. Most of the residents’ dwellings in the Archipelago, the Duwi Balli and the Mandragg are borderline slums.
Walking down the Mandragg, it is the cats you notice first. They are scrawny, and all nurse fresh battle injuries. And they walk with suspicion, giving the drains in the middle of the road a wide berth. Fr Saviour Grima, St Augustine’s parish priest for the past five years, points them out. “It’s the rats,” he tells me. “They are frightened of the rats.”
In St John Street, Pawlu Pace is in his store, which consists of two rooms below street level. “I was born in the Santu Wistin shelter, but grew up here,” he tells me. “We were 10 children, and we all slept in one room. My father, Elia, had a removals business. In fact, our family nickname is ‘Ta’ Karettun’.”
“The Mandragg was always a close-knit community,” Pawlu continues. “In the old days, when a woman gave birth, she would not need to cook for three weeks. The neighbours would take it in turns and cook for her. Everyone helped the neighbours to survive. Whereas merchants and businessmen lived in Merchants and Republic Street, the old Mandragg was a shantytown for fishermen, ferrymen and people who did odd jobs for a living. Here were also the best confectioners and bakers. Mannarinu, Elia Borg Bonaci, Neriku... They all started from here.”
“Nowadays, the situation is much better than it was before the old Mandragg was buried and new social housing was constructed. Yet people are not happy with what they have. They get in debt in order to keep up with the neighbours. But we are still one big family. Of course, we are passionate and occasionally, we do flare up. That is our character. But the Beltin have a heart of gold.”
Further down, rubbish bags pile up on street corners. Outside a baker, wooden pellets are stacked high. They will be burned, and the neighbourhood will be engulfed in smoke. When it rains, water pours downhill and seeps into the buildings. Swearing falls from the open balconies like pelting rain. People below grimace in disgust and hurry on. A local stops to chat with us. “When she was 15, my neighbour got pregnant by a 45-year-old. Now she’s living with a married man. Their children swear like pirates. And they raise rabbits and chickens in the common area.”
“Here,” adds Fr Saviour Grima, “you have to be a social worker, and not just a priest. Out of the 1500 parishioners, 34 per cent are over 61 years old. They live alone in apartments with no lifts, and to get down from the top floors, they have to be given a piggy-back ride by their neighbours. And they are burdened with additional costs. Workers do not come into the city, and when they do, they charge extra. Even drycleaners charge an extra 40 cents to come here.”
“Young people also have no way out. Children suffer from traumas, and don’t go to school. With the CVA, pollution levels in the area have risen because most cars exit from here. The playground, which is the only one in Valletta, is too dangerous for kids to play in. Drug abuse is the second highest in Malta. Junkies shoot up in empty buildings or in stairways, and in summer, when children go down to Marsamxett to swim, the sea is often full of syringes. There are a lot of young, unmarried mothers, and the pregnancy rate soars up during carnival and Christmas. Young people have so much anger, which is why they resort to vandalism. In the Mandragg, usury is also rampant. Some people have no sense of budgeting, and they spend their social benefit cheques on gambling. They even vouch their next month’s cheque on lotto.”
“Yet even in such conditions, for most, leaving is not an option. They are Beltin, and they belong here.”