nigel baldacchino

Pinetu is the Maltese term for the latin Pinetum. In Malta, the only times I ever heard it used was for a park in the periphery of Floriana, where I was born and came of age – so it practically became a proper colloquial name for it among locals. A stone’s throw from the capital city of Malta, such that one cannot avoid flanking it going either way, the area first took shape as a fortification glacis in the 16th century, sloping down flat to facilitate clear sightlines from within. Rumors of early insurrectionist gatherings close to the capital allegedly prompted the British rulers to plant an arbitrary grid of pine trees in the 1930s, obstructing views, that can be seen to date. This was part of the Silver Jubilee celebrations, hence the park’s name. Since then it took a series of turns until it became at once the heroin capital of the island during the surge in the 1990’s, and a peculiar male cruising ground, restricted mostly to middle aged men, some with wife and kids at home, seeking & offering sexual promiscuity at no cost. In a bizarre way, given its conspicuous location, topography and history, the park enabled its community to lead a double life that responded to a predominantly catholic culture of moral grief, denial and shame. By the turn of the millennium, the park came to conjure cultural discomfort to a degree that inhibited all modes of public discourse around it, both in the press, in the streets & in people’s homes. The unanimous diplomatic reticence and reserve around the park attendants’ secrets by the local community could be almost mistaken for respect or solidarity. In 2018, a cleanup effort would find 667 syringes in only one part, some of which even driven into the trees. Hundreds of police reports would typically be filed for mugging by its visitors, there where clothing and other belongings would be found missing.

The periodic restrictions during the Covid19 pandemic brought along a new craving and curiosity for open public spaces. Recent migrants, having flocked to Malta during the economic boom immediately preceding, started using the park for recreation, oblivious to the above. For a stretch of time, one could see a 3m dirt path at the top of the slope separating this tight community of attending cruisers from families having their picnics. The
park inherited the double life it had enabled for its own community.

In 2024, at the time of this writing, a project was announced for Jubilee Grove, that would remodel the park into an illuminated, surveilled & fenced park complete
with children’s areas & cafeterias re-encumbering its designated openness. Dubbed as rehabilitation, with some unacknowledged irony, this intervention seems to be
trying to regulate & sanitize collective memory, forcibly erasing an invisible scar, compounding & completing in spirit the political maneuvering that brought the trees
about to begin with.