In the first days of February 1942, Malta was being bombed, squeezed by shortages, and still haunted by the possibility of a successful invasion. In that siege mindset, the colonial administration decided to be more drastic. It stopped treating “pro-Italian” sentiment as just politics or culture and started treating it as a security problem. In this view, the most logical step would be to remove the ‘threat’ from the island altogether, an escalation from detention to exile. T

Today marks the birth anniversary of Eddie Fenech Adami, born on 7 February 1934 in Birkirkara. His political career is hard to separate from the shape of modern Malta: he led the Nationalist Party for decades, served twice as Prime Minister, and later as President. He swerved as prime minister between 1987–1996 and 1998–2004, and then President from 2004–2009. Fenech Adami trained as a lawyer and entered Parliament in the late 1960s, rising through the Nationalist Party’s ra

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

Perit Andrea Vassallo On 28th January, we remember Perit Andrea Vassallo, the self-made architect behind some of Malta’s most beautiful buildings If you’ve ever stood in front of Ta’ Pinu and felt that it looks almost “too monumental” for the quiet Gozitan countryside around it you’ve already met Andrea Vassallo’s legacy. If you’ve ever appreciated the parish churches in Ħamrun and Siġġiewi, same story. If you’ve ever strolled through Mdina and stumbled upon that Neo-Gothic h

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