Valletta Notes

Short reflections from ResidentiBeltin, rooted in the correspondence, questions and everyday realities of people who call Valletta home. Open any note to read and share the full article.

Legal Notices 161 and 163: When regulation starts driving residents out

Since Legal Notices 161 and 163 of 2022 were introduced, we have spent years asking the same basic questions. Who defines moderate, who measures it, who enforces it? We even offered certified decibel meters to Police - the donation was rejected. Four years later, the same questions remain.

The councillors who answer everything except the question

Two kinds of letters reach Valletta’s councillors: service tickets, which get answered, and the structural questions - Evans Building, tables and chairs, the noise legal notice - which are answered with silence. What four years of correspondence shows.

Parking - a question of whose city this is

Every time parking comes up in Valletta, someone sighs. But parking in a residential city is a question about people - the nurse, the relatives, the resident who makes it home at night. And one more question: where were the elected members?

You cannot cull away the cause

Culling does not fix the food, waste and nesting conditions that create an urban pigeon problem. Fertility control can reduce numbers without repeating an expensive cycle of killing.

Why we became a party

ResidentiBeltin started in 2001 as a blog. For more than twenty years it stayed a voluntary, unregistered group. It registered as an independent political party between 2022 and 2023, and stood candidates in the 2024 council election.

A building is not just a return on investment

Public buildings should first be judged by what they can give to their community, not merely by their commercial return.

A street must remain a street

Valletta’s streets are not spare floor space. They must remain usable for the people who live in the city and move through it every day.

The harbour belongs to the people who live beside it

Regeneration should mean a greener, open and publicly accessible harbour, not another space shaped only by commercial control.

The Grand Harbour is not scenery for a brochure. It is part of our memory, our work, our view from the window and our connection to the rest of Malta.

Renewal can be good. Restored buildings, greener routes, safer walking and open public spaces would make the harbour stronger. But renewal loses its meaning when access becomes conditional, when the waterfront is shaped only for private return, and when the communities around it are treated as an inconvenience.

We do not need to choose between neglect and commercial control. We can ask for a harbour that is cared for, open, green and recognisably ours.