Malta: A Nation Caged in Concrete

 

From Neighbours to Enemies

We have become an aggressive, violent nation. This is not hyperbole. Concrete has swallowed the island, green spaces have vanished, and the result is obvious.

Road rage explodes into fistfights. Parking disputes turn into screaming matches. Party hotspots end in blood. People murdered. People beaten. People snapping at the slightest provocation. Civilised behaviour has evaporated because Malta itself is no longer civilised. 

A Day in the Cage

Here is Malta in one day. At six in the morning, the compressor starts drilling. It continues until eight in the evening, joined by the staccato rhythm of a jackhammer. I close my window because the neighbour below is smoking cannabis, choking my lungs. Two floors down, another neighbour lights his barbecue as if he owns the block

It takes me an hour to drive a journey that should last fifteen minutes. A double-parker blocks the road, tells me to get lost when I honk, and refuses to move. On the return trip, a man in a “Y” plated car nearly wipes me out at 100 kilometres per hour.

This is not bad luck. This is Malta.

An Island of Concrete

The problem is not isolated. The entire country has become one vast urban sprawl. Dusty, noisy, suffocating. Add the highest population density in Europe to the mix, and you get a pressure cooker where aggression is the inevitable outcome.

And science explains why. Studies show that even a one per cent increase in green areas reduces violent crime. Yet in Malta, we chop down mature trees and replace them with towers. Every square metre of grass or woodland is devoured by another block of flats. And with every patch destroyed, our collective sanity drains away.

Why Green Matters

Green spaces are not decoration. They are a man's survival. They reduce stress, encourage calm, and restore balance. Without them, people lose control. Without them, society becomes suspicious, violent, and fractured. Rats in a cage.

The Politics of Greed

But the people who run Malta will never understand this. They mistake greed for progress and cranes for vision. They cannot grasp that true wealth is measured in happiness, not in towers.

And so the country builds, and builds, and builds again. Concrete rises, trees fall, and the nation grows angrier by the day.

A Nation Lost

This is what we have become. Angry. Stressed. Violent. We traded our trees for towers, our silence for jackhammers, and our peace for profit.

Until we face that truth, Malta will remain what it has become. A cage.