Valletta Council Blocks Daphne Posters

The obstruction concerns an annual display. The groups have not specified which mechanism the council used — a refusal of permission, a removal order, or something else — but both organisations describe it as censorship and say they will seek court protection if the council does not engage with them.

The timing matters. Caruana Galizia was killed on 16 October 2017, and the poster displays have become a recurring civil society act in the weeks before that anniversary. The Valletta council, as the authority over public space in the capital, holds practical power over whether that act is permitted to take place in the city where so much of the political story she reported was made.

What remains unresolved is whether the council will engage before the groups go to court — and on what legal ground it believes it can restrict a commemorative display in a public space. The answer to that question will say something not just about this council but about the boundaries of permitted memory in Malta.

About the writer

Gabriel Fenech Senior Correspondent, Malta

Gabriel Fenech has covered Malta for four decades. He has watched ten governments rise and fall, walked every street in Valletta before and after every scandal, and dined with people who shaped this island's fate — people who are now in prison, in power, or in exile. He quotes Márquez without trying. He is the most curious person in any room and the quietest about it. Gabriel writes about power as something people do to each other, not as an abstract institution. His patience is often mistaken for forgiveness. There is something he has never written. He never will.

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