Every time I go down to Hondoq and look around I feel like I’m in an amphitheatre. It’s the surrounding crescent of rock that does it. I wonder what it would be like if all the rubbish could be cleared and replaced by, say, the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra playing songs from the shows, or Vivaldi, Stravinsky, or Dvorák. And maybe a tenor with the calibre of Joseph Calleja. It could work for rock concerts, too.

The audience would sit, or stand, with its back to the sea; or maybe look out across to Comino with the terrifically and naturally amplified music behind them.

In this largely manmade (it used to be a quarry) horseshoe bay or “creek” (there’s sometimes “valley water” running through it that apparently could sustain a pond) Gozo would have its own Arena.

It wouldn’t take much: trees to complement the bushes near the beach, removal of the rocks brought up by sea storms into the inner area of the quarry, seating that could be used for picnics when the “arena” was not in use (which would be most of the time) and it would become a national park.

Imagine – if Malta ever won Eurovision, how fantastic it would be to hold the following year’s final in such wonderful surroundings.

But it’s merely a daydream, because the land – 68 tumoili (23 acres) of it – is owned by speculators who would rather put a 200-bed five-star hotel and a marina for 150 yachts, along with houses, flats and shops, unsustainable half the year, down there.

Even if there were no other objection, it would require trucks grunting and rattling through Qala’s lorry-wide streets every four minutes for four, maybe five, years.

Qala Creek Marina Development? Or the Gozo Arena and a National Park? Who do we think will win?

Revel Barker,

Gozo.

Please see articles below for just some of the history of the proposed Qala Creek project:

https://gozo.news/38316/mepa-appeals-board-rejects-appeal-for-hondoq-project/

https://gozo.news/62940/hondoq-saved-as-development-project-rejected-by-planning-board/

https://gozo.news/71328/a-view-of-what-the-proposed-hondoq-bay-project-could-look-like/

https://gozo.news/86232/gozos-picturesque-hondoq-bay-awaits-its-final-verdict-from-appeal-hearing/

Permalink: Hondoq: culture and a national park, or more ‘development’?