It was unwise of Serge Morel-Jean to spray-paint the rocks at Majjistral Park with red arrows. Instead, he should have considered some more reasonable options – things like off-roading, fly-tipping the remains of his old bathroom or pouring concrete.
He could even have done away with the rocks entirely and replaced them with a room set in a grove of ‘Keep Out’ and ‘No Parking’ signs. He’d be a happier man in his little corner of lawless paradise, had he shown himself more sensitive to local culture. Instead of a court summons, he would by now be the proud recipient of a sanction letter.
The last thing I’ll do is excuse those arrows. I walk at Majjistral most spring and autumn mornings.
There’s something special about getting to know a place through well-trodden routine: every shrub, every inch of rock becomes an event. There’s some, but not much, poetic licence in seeing the world in a blade of grass.
That someone should dismiss garrigue as a ready-made obstacle course and spray-paint all over it is ignorance of the basest kind. If it was indeed Morel-Jean, I hope he gets what he deserves.
Still, you have to pinch yourself. Here was the full might of the law coming down on what must, in the grand scheme of things, be considered a peccadillo. It took the police no time at all to track down Morel-Jean and charge him with environmental crime. He’s now out on bail, but only just.
Judging by the viciousness of public response, perhaps he would be safer behind bars. All it takes is a Frenchman with a spray can. It turns out that most people in Malta are in fact Aboriginal Australians, and fiercely protective of their landscape. Desecrate the slightest twig or the least splinter of rock, and the hurt’s deep and incurable.
Morel's red arrows earned him a prosecution.It’s all in the metaphor, because to see the world in a blade of grass can also be a symptom of myopia. A useful first step towards a cure is Majjistral Park itself. The heart-warming part of the story takes us back to 2007, when good if tardy sense rescued Xagħra l-Ħamra from becoming a golf course.
It was the government, not Morel-Jean, that last year poured concrete over kilometres of walking paths right in the heart of the park- Mark Anthony Falzon
Much optimism followed in the shape of legislation, information booklets and guided walks. Bird trapping on the garrigue was outlawed and Birdlife Malta and the FKNK joined forces to remove truckloads of the rusty oil drums, corrugated sheets and wires that had served trappers, if not necessarily in aesthetically or ecologically sound ways, for years.
Gates were installed to control car access and a visitor centre set up in a sympathetically restored modernist building. I happen to know the people who run the centre and I can vouch for their dedication. Most mornings, they are occupied with the groups of schoolchildren who visit to experience nature on its home turf.
That’s the blade of grass, but there’s a growing gulf between the visitor centre and the rest of the park. Every other day I see people on quad bikes and scramblers off-roading all over the place. The horse riding trails are completely out of control and a growing scar on the garrigue. Left to do as they please, more and more people are opting for the drive-through nature experience.
It was the government, not Morel-Jean, that last year poured concrete over kilometres of walking paths right in the heart of the park. (The point, I believe, was to help contractors make more money than usual.) In at least one place, a population of the rare Sicilian squill was obliterated. No court cases there, no environmental disasters and not a cuffed Frenchman in sight.
And even that’s myopic, because just look at the damn place. You have to wonder if the people baying for French blood have ever been anywhere near the countryside.
On the one hand, the blissfully lawless: the boathouses, the ‘tool rooms’, the construction waste dumped in valleys… the list is as long as it is depressing. It’s not even a matter of protection by powerful patrons (qaddisin). In a climate where there isn’t anyone or anything to protect from, even the protectors lose their job.
On the other hand, the astonishingly lawful. A few years ago, someone bought a dilapidated farmhouse set in mature maquis overlooking the Santi valley near Fort Binġemma. He set about clearing a good couple of tumoli of Mediterranean heath and other shrubs and replacing them with palm trees and green concrete. Reports were made but it was all perfectly in order, apparently.
And is that a two-storey farm for sheep royalty taking shape smack in the middle of the valley at Għajn Riħana? Again, and as reported in Times of Malta in 2019, it’s green light all along by the Planning Authority: the architect even had the cheek to tell the newspaper that “it will look different when it’s finished”. Truly a case of drawing with one hand and giving the finger with the other.
I wish I could get upset over a few red arrows. As is, I consider it a blessing there’s any garrigue left to spray-paint them on.