On 6 February 1952, King George VI died, and Princess Elizabeth became Queen Elizabeth II. The succession was immediate: the moment the King died, the Crown passed to his eldest daughter. The public proclamation that followed didn’t create the new monarch, it formally announced what had already become legally true. For Britain, it was a national rupture: mourning, black borders in newspapers, a sudden change in tone after the austerity of the post-war years. For Malta, still

The 5th of February marks the anniversary of the death of Dun Victor Grech. He died on 5 February 2025 at Mater Dei Hospital, aged 95. Grech was born on 19 October 1929 in Bormla and was ordained a priest on 17 March 1956. He served as Vice-Rector of the Seminary between 1956–1962 and Rector from 1962–1977, as well as the National Director for Vocations. During his years as rector, he helped establish a Maltese priests’ community in Brazil and worked with Mgr Dellaport on the

The year 2017 was a very particular year for Maltese politics. Today marks the anniversary of when Prime Minister Joseph Muscat brought a foreign delegation to Serkin in Rabat to eat pastizzi, like locals do. The images travelled: dignitaries in suits, no cutlery. It looked spontaneous. It wasn’t. It was soft power by design. A visual pitch for a country that wanted to believe that everything was “business as usual”. However, the backdrop matters. 2017 was not a calm year. Th

On 3 February 1995, a routine industrial operation at the Malta Drydocks turned into one of the island’s deadliest tragedies. The oil tanker Um El Faroud, already written off after years of service and damage, was being prepared for controlled demolition ahead of its planned sinking at sea. Instead, a powerful explosion ripped through the vessel, killing nine men, six dockyard workers and three Civil Protection firefighters, and injuring others nearby. The blast was immense.

Fifty years ago today, Malta signed a “Renewed Economic and Technical Co-operation Agreement” with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea). The agreement is a big clue to the kind of foreign policy Malta was trying to run in the 1970s. The agreement is listed by Malta’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs as “North Korea – Renewed Economic and Technical Co-operation Agreement”, signed on 30th January 1976 in Pyongyang. It is recorded as having entered into force on t

The 29th of January, marks the anniversary of the day Malta’s Parliament decriminalised consensual same-sex sexual activity in 1973. This was a legal change that, at the time, looked less like a “rights revolution” and more like an uncomfortable clean-up of an old morality law. Nevertheless, it marked the start of Malta's LGBT rights history What changed was simple but profound: the Criminal Code was amended so that private, consenting same-sex intimacy was no longer treated

In 1987, Malta did not just change governments. It changed the rules that decide who gets to govern at all. The constitutional amendments enacted that year ensured that elections would be won by the party that received the most votes, not by the party who got the most seats. The reform is the outcome of a political crisis that had already pushed the country to the brink. To understand why this change mattered, you have to start six years earlier, with an election result that

In January 1912, Queen Mary visited Malta during a wider imperial tour that reflected the island’s strategic, political, and cultural importance within the British Empire at the beginning of the twentieth century. The visit formed part of the royal couple’s return journey from the Delhi Durbar in India, an event designed to reaffirm imperial authority at a time when global power structures were becoming increasingly uncertain. Malta occupied a central position in Britain’s Me

On 22 January 1984 , Archbishop Mikiel Gonzi died at the age of 99, closing a chapter that had shaped Malta’s political, religious and social life for much of the twentieth century. Few individuals exercised comparable influence over the islands during a period marked by war, decolonisation, ideological conflict and rapid social change. His episcopate, which lasted from 1944 to 1976, coincided almost exactly with Malta’s transition from a British fortress colony into an indep

On 21 January 1956, Malta’s path toward political integration with the United Kingdom entered one of its most divisive moments. On that day, Archbishop Michael Gonzi and the Bishop of Gozo, Giuseppe Pace, issued a joint Pastoral Letter warning of the risks that integration posed to the Catholic Church’s position in Maltese society. At stake was not only Malta’s constitutional future, but the question of who would hold authority over the island’s social order. The integration

On 20 January 1421 , Malta ceased to function as a normal royal territory but ,Instead, the islands became collateral. Facing mounting military expenses and political instability across the central Mediterranean, King Alfonso V of Aragon needed quick liquidity. War campaigns, diplomatic alliances, and the defence of Sicily placed enormous strain on the royal treasury. Raising taxes was politically dangerous. Borrowing was faster. The solution was that Malta and Gozo were pawn

On 19 January 1732 , Malta witnessed a defining moment in its cultural history with the completion and first use of its very first purpose-built theatre. The event was recorded by Fra Gaetano Reboul in his private diary, preserved today at the National Library of Malta, where he noted that the building of a new theatre had been completed and that it was inaugurated, or rather used for the first time, with a theatrical performance staged in the presence of the Grand Master. Th

On 18 January 2022, Maltese politician Roberta Metsola was elected President of the European Parliament. With her election, Metsola became the first Maltese national to lead one of the European Union’s main institutions. For Malta, a country with a population of just over half a million, the moment carried a symbolic wieght. For the first time, a Maltese politician stood at the head of the EU’s only directly elected body. Before her election as President, Roberta Metsola had

On 17 January 1799, Dun Mikiel Xerri was executed by French firing squad in Valletta’s Palace Square for his role in leading a Maltese plot against the French occupying forces. His death has been remembered in Maltese history as the ultimate sacrifice of a patriotic priest resisting foreign rule. French Occupation of Malta in 1798 In June 1798, during Napoleon Bonaparte’s expedition to Egypt, French forces took control of Malta. Napoleon’s army displaced the Knights of St. Jo

By the second half of the sixteenth century, usury in Malta was embedded in daily life. This is the environment that produced the idea of the Monte di Pietà to end usury once and for all.

At the start of the twentieth century, Malta found itself in the middle of a constitutional confrontation that exposed the limits of colonial reform and the depth of local resistance to political rollback. The crisis of 1904, marked by three consecutive elections followed by coordinated mass resignations. This was a deliberate, organised act of protest against the imposition of the 1903 constitutional arrangements, known as the “Chamberlain Constitution”, which significantly

Robert Abela became PM on the 13th of January 2020 after winning the Labour Party leadership contest that followed Joseph Muscat’s resignation. At the time, Malta was navigating a difficult transition. Public trust in institutions was strained, international scrutiny was intense, and political polarisation was high. Abela’s pitch was deliberately measured at the time where he presented himself as a steady administrator rather than a disruptive reformer, someone who understood

On this day in 1957, Malta successfully received its first live television transmission from Italy. The Times of Malta reported that the previous evening, radio mechanic Frank Bonnici, working with A.J. Vella, the local agent for PYE Radio and Television, managed to capture a television signal transmitted from Monte Pellegrino and Monte Soro in Sicily. The reception was described as “good already”, a notable technical achievement given the equipment and conditions of the time

In the course of Malta’s history, earthquakes were not unknown, and small tremors sometimes passed without much notice, but on Sunday 11 January 1693 the islands experienced what is consistently described as the most terrible and most damaging earthquake ever recorded locally, an event that left the population shaken not only by the physical destruction it caused, but by the sense of helplessness it created. A painting showing how the Mdina Cathedral looked before reconstruct

On this day, Maltese television became the stage for one of the most emblematic episodes of the Nationalist Party’s internal crisis during the final years of the Gonzi administration. A live discussion on Bondiplus , hosted by Lou Bondi, featured PN backbencher Franco Debono at a time when the government’s one-seat parliamentary majority had rendered every dissenting voice politically consequential. The context was already charged. The background was a government operating wi