The agreement returning Manoel Island to public ownership is undoubtedly welcome news.
In a country increasingly suffocated by overdevelopment and shrinking open spaces, the prospect of the island becoming national park open to the public rather than dominated by large-scale development is a positive and important step.
Yet as political parties rush to celebrate the agreement, there is also a need for honesty and perspective.
As ADPD – The Green Party rightly pointed out this week, the Labour Party and the Nationalist Party cannot simply rewrite history on Manoel Island.
The original concession handing the island over to private developers in 2000 was approved unanimously in Parliament by both major parties.
Today, both parties are almost taking credit for the island’s return to the public, as though it emerged from long-standing political conviction, when in reality, it came after years of public pressure, activism and changing attitudes towards excess development.
Among those who pushed the issue long before it became politically convenient was former Labour Gżira mayor Conrad Borg Manché, today contesting the general election on the Nationalist Party ticket, who in 2016 physically broke open the closed gates surrounding Manoel Island alongside activists in order to reclaim public access after more than 15 years.
Whatever one thinks of the method, the action reflected a wider frustration felt by many people over the years about the lack of access to such an important public area.
This is not to say that the present agreement should be dismissed, but neither should the public forget that the growing demand for Manoel Island to become a genuine public space did not begin inside Parliament or electoral manifestos.
It came from residents, NGOs, activists and campaigners who spent years arguing that Malta’s urban communities deserved more breathing spaces and fewer walls of concrete.
The Manoel Island agreement should therefore be seen for what it is: a good and positive decision, but also one that arrived after years of criticism, campaigning and shifting public opinion.
It also does not erase years of planning policies that helped fuel overdevelopment across large parts of Malta.
Several localities are of the clearest examples of this reality, with residents facing congestion, over construction, loss of open space and worsening quality of life for years.
Even around Manoel Island itself, controversies over commercial encroachment and further development proposals have continued to raise concerns about whether lessons are truly being learned.
That is why Manoel Island should not remain a one-off exception, while similar problems continue elsewhere.
If political parties are now acknowledging the importance of public spaces and quality of life, then this approach must also be reflected in future planning decisions across the country, particularly in areas already struggling under intense development pressure.
The reality is that growing public concern over planning policies and overdevelopment did not emerge overnight. It has intensified gradually over years of seeing entire localities transformed by development, often with little regard for the people actually living there.
Manoel Island resonates so strongly precisely because many people increasingly feel that accessible open spaces in Malta are becoming the exception rather than the norm.
The scale of public backing behind Manoel Island’s return could not be ignored with the citizen petition “Manoel Island: Post Għalina,” spearheaded by activists, which had gathered 29,041 signatures over two months, showing how strongly people feel about overdevelopment, access to public spaces and the direction planning has taken in Malta over the years.
