Authorities ignored warnings since 2016 as illegal bar expanded at St Peter’s Pool

Visitors expecting sun and sea at one of Malta’s best-loved swimming spots instead found themselves ducking stones hurled by the man running an illegal bar – a contravention the authorities have ignored since 2016.

Videos circulating on social media this month show the operator of the notorious St Peter’s Pool bar attacking visitors with rocks, punches, and insults – an extraordinary spectacle of violence that we seem to have come to accept because our social media reels are replete with similar scenes every day.

People fighting on beaches and in public squares, traffic ground to a halt because there’s a brawl on the street, and the mess in Paceville gets worse year on year.

Regarding the case at St Peter’s Pool, while we don’t know what the people did for him to lurch at them, this behaviour can never be condoned. Most people now seem to think that taking the law into their own hands is somehow acceptable. And they get away with it.

That such behaviour comes from a man long known to the authorities makes it all the more intolerable. For nearly a decade, the site has been a byword for illegality.

What began in 2016 as the unauthorised conversion of an agricultural field into a car park -complete with kiosks, caravans and taxi services – has now become an example of the authorities’ inaction.

The Planning Authority issued it first enforcement notice that same year. And then? Nothing. The illegal structures multiplied, the business expanded, and the owner carried on as though the rules did not apply to him.

The law’s inaction has emboldened the man to the point where, in addition to planning abuses, he now stands accused of outright thuggery. Whether or not charges stick, the pattern is unmistakable: this is a fiefdom carved out of the Delimara coast, run with intimidation rather than licences.

And St Peter’s Pool is no aberration. The wider Delimara peninsula has become a testing ground for impunity.

The danger extends beyond Delimara. Social media is now saturated with clips of street fights – on our streets, our beaches, and our roads. People shot and killed, and nobody bats an eyelid.

The lesson Maltese society is absorbing is a corrosive one: that force trumps law, that whoever shouts loudest or throws the first stone sets the rules of engagement.

Authorities will protest that enforcement takes time, that cases are complex. But eight years after the first notices, the structures at St Peter’s Pool should not still be standing. The bar should not still be operating. And tourists should certainly not be dodging rocks or punches on a summer’s afternoon.

If the Planning Authority, the police and the government will not enforce their own laws, then the Delimara coast will continue to be governed by something far cruder: the law of the jungle. And the shame is not just the damage done to a beauty spot, but the damage done to Malta’s reputation and its very sense of civic order.

Public sentiment online has been scathing. On Tripadvisor, one visitor complained that the spot, once celebrated for crystal waters and cliff diving, has instead become “tragedy… littered with filth” and “overcrowded”.

Another tourist wrote on Tripadvisor: “Driving in towards the bay, you find a small road leading to the left that has a sign St Peter’s Pool parking stuck to a pole. This leads to a privately owned field where they not only charge you for parking but you have to pass through the most disgusting dirty ‘snack bar’ I’ve ever seen, to go down a much longer way to the bay. When you see that sign, KEEP DRIVING!!”