Few Maltese people are not drawn to the allure of Gozo. Although it is only 25 minutes away, it offers the illusion of freedom. For teenagers, it’s been an excuse to party hard away from the prying eyes and ears of their parents for generations; for the slightly older crowd, it offers peaceful walks in the country and less noise and traffic.
You would think that the fact that so many people flock to Gozo because it is unspoilt would be a major motivator to, well, not spoiling it but, alas, not even that is reason enough when it comes to the unabating tsunami of greed that continues to sweep our islands, destroying everything in its path.
It’s been a source of irony not lost on many that the same people who contributed to uglifying much of Malta would go to Gozo “to rest” in their village ‘farmhouses’ on the weekends. As with the way these things always work, it was those who could not afford to buy a second house who suffered.
Last week, the prime minister took to his podium to tell Gozitan farmers they should attract agritourists to improve their own viability and I almost screamed with laughter. I do not know how many farmers the prime minister has met in his lifetime but I can assure him that all that most Gozitans want for Christmas is to be left in peace and not have to deal with the rubbish and noise that they have to face every time the house next door to them is rented out (by their, to be fair, Gozitan neighbour) to people who decide to turn sleepy villages into open-air Gigi d’Agostino concerts.
Always acting like the bigger, bossier sister, it never seems to occur to the Maltese to ask Gozitans what it is they actually want. When all the Gozitan mayors joined forces back in October to decry the fact that Gozo was going down the same path as Malta construction-wise, they were completely ignored for months. What will come out of the meeting that they were finally granted last week with the Planning Authority and the environment ministry after growing pressure remains very much to be seen. I have yet to see any pendulum in this country sway in a direction that is not immediately financially profitable.
It looks very much like the money-soaked writing is on the wall for beautiful Gozo- Anna Marie Galea
With permits in Gozo increasing by 240 per cent since 2013, ODZ permits increasing rapidly by the day and Robert Abela reiterating yet again his government’s plan to build a tunnel between the two islands, it looks very much like the money-soaked writing is on the wall for beautiful Gozo and, instead of just Xlendi and Marsalforn being ruined and turned into concrete favelas, we can maybe even look forward to seeing skyscrapers overlooking San Dimitri chapel and blocks of flats overlooking Ġganitija for that inimitable, incomparable view of a world heritage site.
For a country that relies so heavily on tourism, we don’t really seem to care about helping our cause. Which tourists are going to want to visit an overbuilt, spoilt patch of land seeping concrete when they could just go to one of Greece’s or southern Italy’s many untouched islands instead?
That said, if you are a developer and all else fails, you can always register yourself as an active farmer like Joseph Portelli’s 24-year-old daughter, who is also the general manager of her father’s Quaint Hotels chain, did in an insult to all real farmers working the land. Who knows, maybe that was the kind of agritourism that the prime minister had in mind when he made his latest statement. I better not shout too much, I wouldn’t want to wake sleeping dogs.