Malta Is Full. Please Try Again Later.

I’ll start with something utterly shocking: Malta — that little sun-drenched rock in the Mediterranean that’s smaller than most airport car parks — now holds more people than it was ever, in any reality, designed to accommodate. This place is just 316 square kilometres of limestone, potholes, and people arguing over parking spots, yet somehow it’s now home to what feels like half of Europe and a large chunk of outer space.

In the span of just ten years — between 2013 and 2023 — the population of Malta ballooned from 425,000 to 552,000. That’s a 30% increase. In a decade. I’ve had sourdough starters that grew slower. It’s like someone left the migration tap on and forgot to install a stopcock.

But wait. It gets even more ludicrous. That 552,000? That’s just the residents. In August 2023, the National Statistics Office did a headcount and found out that with tourists included, the “effective population” hit a knee-wobbling 628,058. That’s more people than Malta has roads. And I’m being generous in calling them roads — most of them are just suggestions with potholes large enough to swallow a Smart car whole.

By December, when the tourists evaporate like rain on a hot bonnet, the number only dips to 562,000 — and that’s still enough to give every bit of infrastructure a mild nervous breakdown.

Now, for those of you who don't speak Government, "effective population" is a fancy term that means “how many people are currently standing on the island breathing oxygen, flushing toilets, and wondering why there’s so much traffic.” And trust me, there is so much traffic. If you leave for work at 8 AM in Birkirkara, you’ll arrive in Valletta around lunchtime. On Tuesday. Of the following week.

The roads are permanently jammed with everything from e-scooters to Toyota Vitzes being driven like Formula 1 cars by people with zero sense of spatial awareness. The buses are packed tighter than a Ryanair flight during a luggage sale. And the whole thing produces more pumps out more fumes than my kitchen extractor fan on Christmas Day — when the turkey’s cremated, the sprouts are fermenting, and someone’s set the brandy on fire.

Of course, more people mean more sewage. And more sewage in Malta usually means exactly what you think: overflows, smells that could knock out a camel, and the delightful risk of wading through it on your way to the beach. Yes, that beach — the one that was pristine once but now looks like someone emptied a recycling bin after a particularly wild tourist barbecue.

Don’t even get me started on the water situation. Malta gets its water from desalination plants, which, for the record, are as energy-hungry as a teenage gamer and its energy from imports. Which means, during summer, when everyone’s running their air conditioner like it’s a life support machine, you can practically hear the national grid weeping in the distance.

And if all that wasn’t enough to make you pour a whisky and shout into a hedge, the countryside — what little of it remains — is being replaced at record speed by apartment blocks. Not nice ones, either. We’re talking buildings that look like they were designed in PowerPoint, shoved up overnight, and painted in colours only legally permitted on ice cream packaging.

Now, tourism. Oh boy. Everyone loves to say tourism is the lifeblood of Malta’s economy — and yes, it brings in the euros, the Aperol Spritzes, and an impressive collection of inflatable flamingos. But when you’ve got 3 million tourists a year crammed onto an island the size of a large rug, it stops being economic and starts being slightly psychotic.

Take St Julian’s. On paper, a town. In practice, Ibiza is on a bad day. In August, for every 100 residents, there were 129 tourists. That’s not tourism. That’s a full-scale invasion. The place has more selfie sticks than residents. At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if they start issuing helmets and evacuation maps.

The housing situation? Well, if you're Maltese and want to rent a flat in a decent area, you’ll need a time machine, a rich uncle, and possibly a minor miracle. Prices have gone up faster than a SpaceX rocket, and in some towns, you’d get more square footage in an Italian coffee bar toilet.

All of this begs the question — and I ask it while gripping the steering wheel of my Mitsubishi in a gridlock that hasn’t moved since 2019 — what is the plan? Because from the outside, it looks less like a nation managing growth and more like a juggling act performed by a man with no arms and a blindfold on.

Urban planning? That’s just something you read about in old textbooks. Environmental safeguards? Mostly honoured in the breach. Sustainability? That word gets used, but mostly by developers moments before they pour concrete onto a protected field.

Malta has reached a tipping point. We can’t keep importing labour, courting tourists, building flats, and pretending everything’s fine while the country visibly wheezes under the strain. At some point, the island will simply say, “Right, I’m full,” and slide quietly into the sea.

Because here's the truth, no one wants to say out loud: Malta can keep growing. But the real question is — should it?