On a Saturday evening in January, an estimated 110,000 people – more than a quarter of Malta’s population – funnelled into Valletta, its tiny gem of a capital, to celebrate the city’s inauguration as Europe’s Capital of Culture 2018. “National pride has reached historic levels,” proclaimed the prime minister, Joseph Muscat.
No matter that the award is a joint one, which Valletta is sharing with Leeuwarden, the 25th largest city in the Netherlands. No matter that it goes to countries on a rota, not as an honour. No matter that much of the artistic material on the night was recycled. No matter that the pride evaporated when people had to wait up to three hours to get on a bus home. And no matter that the occasion came barely three months after Malta’s greatest-ever reputational disaster: the spectacular murder, by car bomb, of the country’s most prominent journalist, Daphne Caruana Galizia.
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