The Limestone Letter - 19 October 2026

This newsletter got its first three subscribers last week. I’d like to say I took it in my stride. In fact I did what everyone here does with good news, which is tell nobody and then mention it to four people before lunch.

All three of you came through a Facebook group, which is fitting: Malta runs on recommendation. The best restaurant in your village has no sign, the best mechanic has no website, and the person who sorted your residence card is a friend of a friend whose name you’ve already forgotten. Word of mouth isn’t a marketing channel here, it’s the way of life.

So, welcome, and thank you for being early. Everything that follows is written by someone who lives here, for people who do. If it’s useful, tell a friend. If it isn’t, tell me.

Stand at the Ferries in Sliema at six on a weekday evening in October. Then consider a number published on Wednesday by the National Statistics Office: 29,023. That is how many people, residents and tourists together, Sliema holds per square kilometre on an average day in 2025. It is the densest place in Malta, and Malta is the densest country in the European Union.

Three sets of figures landed in a single week, and together they settle an argument the tourism authority would rather keep open. Eurostat counted 21.7 tourist nights per inhabitant in Malta in 2025, second in the EU behind Croatia and three times the EU average of seven. Malta also had the EU's largest rise in tourist nights, 10 per cent in a year, and the smallest share of them in July and August, which means the pressure no longer has a season. The NSO's new effective population series puts the average daily tourist presence at 50,767 on top of 581,244 residents, rising to more than 90,000 extra people in August. St Julian's carries 83 tourists for every 100 residents across the year, and 143 in August. Valletta carries 80.

Carlo Micallef, who runs the Malta Tourism Authority, said this week: "I do not believe we have overtourism." The Prime Minister has ruled out a cap on arrivals, which will pass four million this year, and said the budget will raise on-the-spot fines instead. The Shift put Malta's net tourist load at 8.7 per 100 residents against roughly 6.7 in Amsterdam and six in Barcelona, both cities that have decided they have a problem.

What the numbers don't show is where the people go, and that is the part residents already know. Tourists don't spread. They go to Sliema, St Julian's and Valletta, which is where many of you live, and they go there in October as much as July, because the flights are cheaper and the sea is still 24 degrees. The Planning Authority approved a 29-room five-star hotel in Valletta on Wednesday, opposite an alley narrow enough that a resident asked the board what it is like to have a hotel approved facing your bedroom. Nobody answered.

I'm not against tourists. I was one. The question the figures put is simpler than the politics: at what number does the place that attracted them stop being that place? Croatia is the only country ahead of us. Nobody in Dubrovnik thinks that's a compliment.

Budget 2027, next Monday.

Budget day is 26 October, and the Finance Minister has already said most of it. Cost of living adjustment: “very close to €10” a week. No tax rate cuts, no VAT cut, no new taxes. Energy and food subsidies cost €608m and stay. Interest on unpaid tax doubles to 7.2 per cent. The Prime Minister added, in a television interview, that income tax for parents falls again from 1 January, pensions are strengthened, first-time buyer and equity-sharing schemes widen, and there’ll be no parking meters and no higher licence fees. He also promised a “clear and absolute guarantee” on electricity, water, gas, petrol and diesel prices. For the expat on a Maltese payroll, €10 a week is the number that matters; for landlords and tenants, nothing on rent has been signalled. Full breakdown in the issue of 2 November. Budget night itself is worth watching for one reason: it’s the only evening of the year the whole island agrees what to argue about.

The Strand pavement, continued.

Two weeks ago we reported the canopy that Piccolo Padre, the new restaurant at the Centric Hotel, had put across the Sliema pavement without a permit. The awning came down within days. Not the cemented platform on public land. On Tuesday the Lands Authority served the hotel's owner, Carlo Stivala, with a 30-day eviction notice, saying he has neither title nor a permit to occupy the land, and must remove everything on it. By Thursday evening the tables and chairs had gone and the platform was still there. Then there is the larger problem, reported by The Shift: the hotel above sits in an urban conservation area where hotels aren't permitted, the tribunal cancelled its permit decision in January, and a Court of Appeal judgment on whether the whole building is legal is weeks away. The lesson for anyone watching a building go up next door: the enforcement notice is the start, not the end, and the Lands Authority turns out to be the body with teeth.

Cremation comes to Malta, pending appeal.

The Planning Authority approved the Ta' Brija crematorium in Siġġiewi on 8 October, as the case officer recommended, treating it as an extension of the cemetery next door. By the following evening the Siġġiewi council had voted unanimously to appeal, to ask for the permit to be suspended while it does, and to go to the Court of Appeal if it loses. Its grounds: the decision conflicts with the PA's own 2024 crematoria policy, the Environment and Resources Authority never gave the opinion the law requires, and nobody studied emissions, traffic or the loss of farmland. For residents the practical position is unchanged for now. Cremation still means Sicily, with the paperwork and the bill that implies. If the appeal fails, Malta gets its first crematorium with 2,480 niches for ashes, and a price list nobody has yet published.

School transport, at 5.45 in the morning.

Free school transport is one of the things that sells Malta to families, and this week fourteen parents from seven families in the north described what it looks like at the edges. Children from Mellieħa are collected at 5.47am for a 7.15 arrival at a Church school in Bormla, ninety minutes each way. According to the operator, the route is a "special" one because it runs under its 76 per cent capacity threshold. And the head of school transport is reported to have told parents they should not have chosen a school so far away. Free school transport takes an estimated 19,469 cars off the road every morning, which is why nobody wants to break it. For parents choosing a school this year: ask the transport office for the actual route and pick-up time before you accept the place. The map and the minibus are different things.

The hornet year.

Pest controllers are reporting more than 5,000 oriental hornet call-outs this year, with hundreds of callers turned away, and one beekeeper has lost 16 colonies. The warning from the trade is that Malta could lose its bees within two to five years. On Wednesday the Prime Minister told the agriculture ministry to find a "quick" solution; an MEP replied that the government is three years late. Why it's in a newsletter for people in flats: the hornets nest in roof spaces, water tanks and the gap behind the air-conditioning unit, and October is when the colonies peak. If you find a nest, don't spray it yourself; they defend it. Call a licensed pest controller, and expect a wait.

On Saturday evening in Żejtun a man in medieval dress reads a proclamation in the square, and the village brings its olives in. Carts come down from the fields with the harvest stacked on them, drummers and flag bearers in front, and the olives go to be pressed there and then. Somebody hands you a piece of Maltese bread with oil on it that was inside a fruit an hour earlier. It is free. That alone makes it the best-value evening on the island this month.

Żejt iż-Żejtun means, more or less, "oil in Żejtun", and the pun is the point: the village is named for the olive, żebbuġ, and the oil, żejt, and it has been pressing them since before the Knights. The festival is the local council's, not a tourism product, and it shows. There are stalls selling trees and oil and honey, displays of the tools people's grandfathers used, folk singers doing għana, and the parish church of St Catherine opens its crypt and belfries, which it does almost never. On Sunday morning the newly confirmed children of the parish plant trees, and then the priest blesses the animals: dogs and cats mostly, but horses and cattle too, led into the square by people who are not performing anything.

What an October festival teaches you, if you've only done the August ones, is that Malta has a harvest. The island is so paved and so hot in summer that newcomers assume nothing grows. Then the first rain comes, the fields in the south turn green in a fortnight, and the oldest villages do what they've always done with it.

Practical notes. Saturday from early evening, Sunday morning; exact times aren't published online, so arrive by six on Saturday and nine on Sunday, but verify times before you go. Żejtun is twenty minutes from Sliema by car and badly served by bus on a Saturday night; park at the edge and walk in. A shower is possible on Saturday afternoon, but the evening should stay dry; the carts go round regardless. Bring cash for the stalls, and a bottle to take oil home in.

The thing that lingers is the blessing of the animals, which sounds twee and isn't. A farmer stands in a square with a cow on a rope while a priest sprinkles water on it, and nobody laughs, because the cow is how he lives. You'll see Malta more clearly in that minute than in a month of Valletta.

Tmun, Triq Martino Garces, Mġarr Harbour, Għajnsielem, Gozo. You can see it from the ferry as you come in, which is the first argument for it: lunch in Gozo without a car. Paul Buttigieg has cooked here for years, the Michelin inspectors have listed it since 2020 and mark it a favourite, and the cooking follows the boats. Whatever came in that morning is on the menu that lunchtime.

What to order. Start with the day's catch ceviche at €14 or the barbecued octopus at €14 with pickled shiitake and a caper and raisin purée, which is the dish the room is known for. Then fish: the grouper at €34, the panko tempura monkfish at €29, or the fish trio at €35 if you can't choose. The lamb at €32 and the Balinese porchetta at €25 are there for the person who didn't want fish and will regret it. Desserts run €7 to €10; the apple tarte tatin at €9 is the one. Two couples who want the kitchen to decide can take the sharing menu, seven plates for €120 a couple, up to eleven for €180.

Caveats. Winter hours are awkward: lunch Monday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, dinner Monday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, closed Tuesday and Wednesday. Lunch service ends at a quarter to two, so take the ferry that gets you in by noon. Book online or on 2156 6276. Sunday lunch here, then the 3pm boat back, is the best use of a Gozo day that doesn't involve a car.

FOOD ON THE EDGE MALTA - Monday 19 and Tuesday 20 October, from 8.30am, Fort St Elmo, Valletta. The Irish chefs' symposium holds its first edition outside Galway; two days of talks on where food is going. Tickets through the organisers.

THE MIDDLE SEA RACE COMES HOME - all week, Grand Harbour and the Royal Malta Yacht Club, Ta' Xbiex. Black Jack 100 led the fleet past Stromboli on Sunday morning and could be home as early as Monday evening, wind permitting; the rest of the 107 boats come in through the week, with the prize-giving on Saturday. The marina bar at the club is the place to watch them tie up.

MIRIAM GALEA, GĦADAJJAR GĦAJNEJJA: EBBS AND FLOWS - opens Thursday 22 October, 7pm, Malta Society of Arts, Republic Street, Valletta; runs to 12 November. Free.

LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS - Friday 23 to Sunday 25 October, 8pm, Teatru Manoel, Valletta. Masquerade's production of the musical, directed by Anthony Bezzina; then 29 October to 1 November.

DAQQA FOLK - Friday 23 to Sunday 25 October, from 8pm, Qala square, Gozo. Three nights of Gozitan, Maltese and international folk under a tent, a different programme each night; free.

JUNIOR EUROVISION SONG CONTEST - Saturday 24 October, 9pm, MFCC, Ta' Qali. Sixteen countries, Malta hosting for the fourth time; the arena is dressed as a festa village.

ŻEJT IŻ-ŻEJTUN - Saturday 24 October evening and Sunday 25 October morning, Żejtun. The olive harvest festival; details in The Expat Edit. Free.

IN GUARDIA - Sunday 25 October, 11am, Fort St Elmo, Valletta. The garrison re-enactment; €10, children €5, or €17 with the fort and War Museum; cancelled in bad weather.

TA' BISTRA CATACOMBS - Sunday 25 October, 9am to 4pm, Triq il-Missjunarji Maltin, Mosta. Heritage Malta's monthly opening of the roadside catacombs; €5, children €2.50, tickets at the door.

FESTA OF OUR LADY OF CONSOLATION - Sunday 25 October, Gudja. Madonna taċ-Ċintura, the village's second feast; the only festa of the week.

ParksInMalta, at parksinmalta.mt, is a map of more than 200 parks, gardens, playgrounds and open spaces across Malta and Gozo, and the first time anyone has put them in one place. Filter by what you need: a playground with shade, an outdoor gym, a dog park, toilets, a picnic table, a wheelchair-accessible path. Tap "Parks Near Me" and it tells you what's within walking distance, with directions. Save it to your phone's home screen and it behaves like an app. For anyone with a small child or a dog in a flat in Gżira, it answers the Saturday morning question in about eight seconds.

No replies yet to last week’s question, so this week The Pjazza answers one put to me instead. A reader in one of the expat Facebook groups asked, reasonably, who I am and what my credentials are for writing this.

Fair question. I’ve lived in Malta for three years. I came for work, like most people do, and I stayed, like fewer people do. I started in Naxxar, moved to St Julian’s for the stretch everyone does in St Julian’s, and for the past couple of years I’ve lived in Mġarr, which I love and which almost nobody in St Julian’s could point to on a map. On a free day you’ll find me walking round a fort, or lying on a beach doing nothing, which in October is still an option.

Credentials: none worth the name. I’m not a journalist and I’m not Maltese. I’m someone who has done the residence card queue, the rental search, the three-village house move, and who reads the local press every week so you don’t have to. Where I know something, I say it. Where I don’t, I say that too, and I’d rather you reply and correct me than let it stand.

That’s the whole pitch. If you’ve got a better question than “who are you”, send it. Hit reply.

Twenty-six on Tuesday, then a wet Wednesday morning as a trough crosses the island, the same one the Middle Sea Race fleet is bracing for off Sicily. After that it settles at 22 or 23 with light winds. Saturday has a chance of a shower in the afternoon; Sunday is dry and bright, which suits the one weekend this month with two things worth standing outside for. October in Malta gives you summer back in instalments so you'll notice when it stops paying.

Visitors always comment on one thing about Malta that you stopped noticing years ago. What is it, and when did you stop seeing it?

Hit reply - I read every response.

Min jistenna jithenna. He who waits will rejoice. The proverb every Maltese grandmother keeps for queues, buses, builders and permits, said with a patience the rest of us are still trying to learn.