The last merchant in Merchants Street

It’s funny how people get all soppy and sentimental about “the last farmer in the Valley of Honey” – if you’ll allow that as a translation of ‘L-Ahhar Bidwi F’Wied il-Ghasel’ – but not about “the last butcher in the market of Valletta”.

Why is that, I wonder? Why does no poetry adorn the final closure of an equally epochal changing of the guard: a move that sees an old, family run institution in the heart of the capital city – literally the last of its kind: the only market stall still operating in what was once “is-Suq tal-Belt” – replaced with another faceless, modern supermarket of the kind that already litter the islands anyway?

Maybe it’s because the dying trade in Valletta happens to concern butchery: a guttural, earthy profession that cannot be romanticised, no matter how hard you try. Not, mind, you, that there is very much that is truly glamorous about the life of a Maltese farmer, either. But somehow, we subliminally accord these two related professions a very different status when mourning their demise. 

Alongside shepherds, farmers are traditionally depicted as ‘the salt of the earth’. They are a recognisable part of a bucolic tableau that instantly evokes honesty, rustic simplicity and close contact with nature. That’s probably why Claudio Baglioni recorded the track ‘L-Ahhar Bidwi’ in the first place. It’s not an epitaph on a single farmer: it’s a nostalgic tribute to an entire way of life that once existed, but no longer does.

Butchers? Not quite the same thing. The images they evoke have more to do with cleavers, meat hooks and bloodied aprons. That sort of iconography is difficult to sentimentalise: you can’t exactly get all mushy over a profession that ultimately involves killing and dismembering a bunch of cute, cuddly animals. I suspect this also has something to do with why ‘The Good Shepherd’ works so much better than the ‘Good Butcher’ as an appellation for Jesus Christ... very unfair on butchers, I know; but no less true for that.

So I imagine that Claudio Baglioni will not be teaming up with any Maltese songwriters to lament the fall of the last traditional Maltese butcher in the capital of Malta, who has now been given his marching orders to accommodate the fifth Arcadia supermarket on the island. Pity, because it would have made a good song. It is, after all, the very stuff that folk music is made of: the sad tale of a lone man’s futile struggle against an establishment that deploys its full strength to bundle him out of the place where his family has toiled for generations.

But let’s hear it straight from the butcher’s mouth: “I’m definitely not happy with having to leave the market where my father and grandfather sold meat for more than 100 years,” says Charles Falzon – Oh, and by the way, that reminds me: are all butchers in Malta named ‘Charles’? There seems to be a ‘Charles Butcher’ in every single town and village. And… do they become butchers because they were named ‘Charles’… or do they change their name when they become butchers?

So many questions, so little time…

In any case: “It’s the end of an era,” Charles the Butcher goes on. “What once was a bustling market has become a desolate space which will now become a high-end food court […] It’s a pity. Markets are the heartbeat of cities and Valletta will be one of the few capitals in Europe to have no real food market.”

The rest of the story will surely sound familiar. It’s very much like the opening to every Asterix comic you’ve ever read: “Rome, 55BC. All Gaul is under Roman rule. All? No, a single village in Armorica still holds out, etc. etc.” 

In a nutshell, the few other outlets that had somehow survived in the Valletta market were individually approached and bought out by the supermarket chain, until only one was left – P&J Company Limited, the lone butcher who resisted all advances and chose to fight, unaided, rather than just sell out.

Then, strangely, the government got involved: not to defend the tenants’ rights against an aggressive corporate takeover – as one would rightly expect, given that this particular government happens to also call itself ‘Socialist’ – but rather, to forcibly relocate the defiant butcher so that Arcadia’s investment plan can go ahead as agreed. 

In other words, the government played the role of representative of a private corporation’s interests… when its actual role is representative of the electorate as a whole (which, last I looked, also included Charles the Butcher).

Naturally, a few questions spring to mind. I’d be curious to know, for instance, on what grounds the government chose to intervene at all, in what is ultimately a private business matter. Arkadia may have won a government tender to ‘develop and restore’ the 19th century market. But as far as I am aware, once a tender has been adjudicated, the government ceases to play an active role in any subsequent complications that may arise for the successful bidders. It certainly has no business to be intervening in a private dispute.

I’d also want to know the precise legal grounds on which the holder of a government lease can be evicted before expiry of said lease, as was clearly the case here. That the rent was not paid would be one valid reason (no indication in the story of whether this is the case). Used for illegal purposes would be another. But to kick out a lessee, for no other apparent reason than because it would benefit a much larger and well-financed corporation… I don’t know. Doesn’t sound very Socialist to me. Nor very legal, for that matter…

Even if it is established that the intervention was warranted and legal: was there no other solution than to simply boot one party out? We are told, for instance, that no offer was made to accommodate the existing stalls within the new plans. Why not? Why deny these tenants the right of first refusal, which is habitually accorded to all tenants everywhere? 

The only plausible answer is that this is not any old ordinary takeover scenario, where the normal rules of business engagement apply. This is part of a wider strategy – an official policy, even – to radically alter Valletta’s entire identity in time for its celebration as a ‘European Capital of Culture’ in 2018.

And it’s not just limited to our friend the butcher. The above story should be familiar for another reason: the exact same pattern is perfectly visible in other parts of Valletta, too. Even in other parts of Merchants Street…

Just as our valiant butcher faced his inevitable defeat at the hands of Malta’s political/industrial complex, the much-maligned Valletta Monti hawkers were likewise being bundled from one street corner to another, for all the world like a garbage bag no one wants on his doorstep. 

They’ve already been given their marching orders from Ordnance Street, because their presence there might upset the grand (and entirely alien) aesthetic vision of a Master Architect for the entrance to Valletta. Now, similar battle-lines are being drawn to deny them relocation further up Merchants Street. Makes you wonder how the street even got its name, if ‘merchants’ are such vile, leprous beings that their presence cannot be tolerated there at all…

There is, in brief, the same sea-change unfolding in the background, as there was in the case of the last ‘bidwi’ in Wied il-Ghasel. It’s not just a story about a traditional butcher evicted by a supermarket chain: it is also a reflection of a reality that is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. Everywhere you look, individual (mostly family-run) establishments are being gobbled up by franchises and chains which – even though local (Arcadia first started out in Gozo) – nonetheless owe more in character to the faceless, multi-corporate reality you will find in all developed countries everywhere, than to the capital whose ‘cultural identity’ we are supposed to be celebrating in 2018. 

Part of that same cultural identity also gets booted out with the relocation of that butcher from the old market, and the Monti from Valletta. Even more will be lost with the impending transformation of that market into a sanitised, state-of-the-art shopping centre, which charges 20% of turnover in rent… thus sealing off entry to all but the highest-end of retail outlets, and ridding Valletta once and for all of the entire concept of a ‘city market’ (which is supposed to cater for everyone).

What is that, if not a straight swap between everything that makes Valletta the city it is, and some private investment here and there (7 million, in the case of the market) to transform Valletta into what could just as easily be any other part of Malta... or indeed any other country?

It’s not so much ‘gentrification’, as ‘Pavi-fication’ (Or Lidl-ification, or Smart-ification, or Arcad-ification, if you prefer). Malta is metamorphosing before our eyes into one giant supermarket chain, in which there is no more visible trace of anything that is recognisably ours. 

And just to add an overwhelming dash of irony to the mix, all this is being perpetrated in the name of ‘culture’. To go back to the butcher story: “In 2008, MEPA listed the market as a Grade 1 building and the new project must be completed by 2017, in time for the celebrations marking Valletta’s status as European cultural capital in 2018.”

Yes, that’s a great way to celebrate Valletta as a European Cultural Capital in 2018. By cutting the ribbons at the latest Arcadia supermarket: one of only five successful, clinical and largely identical supermarkets already on the island – when we could be celebrating all the life, bustle and culture that actually helped shape Valletta’s identity over the past 100 years.

Some ‘culture’ we’ll all be celebrating, huh? May as well rename it: “Valletta 2018: European Capital of Corporate Ruthlessness’…