Matthew Vella
Valletta heaved as thousands poured into the gates of the city, frustrating bottlenecks holding up the human traffic that attempted to get a front row seat down by St Barbara Bastions. For once, Valletta was alive in an evening where the city’s bars and restaurants praised EU accession as the beer flowed liberally and the cash registers rang merrily.
On the other side of the Grand Harbour, St Angelo waited patiently as giant adverts shone across the walls once besieged by marauding Ottomans. This time round, only one knight, a Maltese, resides at St Angelo, and Turkey is now a republic campaigning to join the EU.
Mobile networks had reached meltdown by 11.25pm. Friends wandered aimlessly around looking for each other, huffing impatiently as calls failed to make it through. A mainly young crowd, and many foreigners, had congregated by the bastions.
There was a distinct feeling that few Labourites will actually come to witness the historic moment. The day after, Labour’s followers flocked to Valletta for the traditional Mayday rally. In Valletta, no self-respecting Labourite would have stood being stuck in a forest of EU flags. Some smug electoral throwbacks also chose to come out decked in white ‘IVA’ sweaters. Labour MP Jose Herrera was reportedly the only Opposition MP who attended the PM’s celebration at the Upper Barakka.
Plus ça change for the Nationalists, whose ‘solidarity’ buzzword, emblazoned in light projection over St Angelo, slowly threatens to become as staid as Gonzi’s own cabinet.
Back at Castille, the throng turned down to St Agatha Street as men in black tie stood at the gates of the Upper Barakka, which hosted the Prime Minister’s own do. The Valletta and Floriana public gardens had been seized by the organising consortium and leased out to sponsors and companies to make good for the financial shortfall as thousands of liri burned high up in the sky for one of the most magnificent, non-local, pyrotechnic masterpieces. It looked like the government’s enthusiasm for Europe had faded away with such a meagre contribution of Lm270,000 towards the spectacular’s expense, reportedly three times the gift. “At least”, one bystander told me, “not much of our tax money was spent.”
But never mind the killjoys. Twenty minutes ahead of the show, a friend called out from one of the 500K houses on Valletta’s most elegant bastion. With friends on tow, and one Turkish language student, we watched the show in style. Lou Bondi, television journalist and now entrepreneurial figurehead for the Welcomeurope consortium, had made our trip to Valletta – relatively traffic-free but unbelievably impossible to board a bus – worthwhile and possibly meaningful for those onlookers attempting to decipher the flashing images lighting up St Angelo, by far the toast of monumental Europe in its epic flawlessness.
The crowds applauded images of a frail Pope John Paul and Lawrence Gonzi, but muttered as flags of former imperialist nations that held Malta’s base straddled across the façade. ‘B’Solidarjeta’, staple locution in Nationalist jargon, gleamed across the 500-year old fortification in tandem with the words sung by eurovision hopefuls Julie and Ludwig.
Surprisingly, no images of Eddie Fenech Adami but instead Prodi (ah!), Cox (who?) and Verheugen (ooh!), immortalised by Sant after being threatened to have his tongue cut out.
Throughout the course of the spectacular, Maltese luzzijiet carrying the flags of the EU’s 25 drifted graciously into position as the light projections beamed into the Grand Harbour.
Roger Waters, that cad from the world of braggadoccio prog-rock, had a couple of minutes from his rock-opera Ca Ira premiered on the night. There was close to perfect co-ordination between lights, fireworks and Waters’ orchestral cacophony. But it was unclear as to when Waters’ opera kicked in, or stopped for that matter.
Popular sentimentalism however reigned as the national anthem started, a prelude to the ensuing countdown to European unification. Drunken voices slurred Dun Karm’s poetry, hands lifted up in V-signs, and then all round applause and shouting as Malta became one of the 25. The grand campaign for Europe, with all its frills, had finally come to a triumphant end.
matthew@newsworksltd.com
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