The head of Malta’s National Archives has vented his frustration that the wait for a fully-fledged dedicated premises to house their ever-growing collections continues despite government’s electoral pledge to solve this issue.

Charles J Farrugia raised the matter in the 2024 annual report in which he expressed his “disappointment that another year passed and the search for a site to replace the one that was taken away from us at Ta’ Qali so that we can start work on the badly-needed new National Archive has not led to any result”.

The story goes back to 2019 when a deed was signed transferring public land at Ta’ Qali for constructing a new, centralised National Archives, alongside the National Audio-Visual Institute (NAVI), and converting the current Rabat facility into a medical history museum. However, the site was repurposed—ultimately developed into a multi-level car park and a concert venue—instead of the archives building.

In his remarks Charles J Farrugia noted that the National Archives kept up the pressure on the authorities to deliver on this electoral promise.  A new National Archive is crucial to avoid a total collapse of the present system and the dismantling of the records management infrastructure that we have been painstakingly building over the years, he warned.

Consequently,  new accessions are being stored at facilities being rented from the private sector.  “We ran out of storage space, and we cannot let the public to suffer from this shortcoming. This is in no way the ideal solution.  But we cannot go back on our tradition of putting access to the archives as the main raison d’être of our existence and work.”

This is not the first time that the matter was raised in the annual report, but so far it seems that these complaints have fallen on deaf ears. From time to time, the matter was also raised in various parliamentary questions with Culture Minister Owen Bonnici being rather evasive in his replies, saying government was evaluating various potential sites. However, no tangible progress has been registered.

The National Archives was accorded the land in a 2019 deed signed by three ministers, but since then the planned project was overtaken by the Ta’ Qali concert venue built in place of an old concrete factory.

Government has been forced to seek new storage space that can guarantee 5,000 metres of shelving for the National Archives’ holdings, which are currently held at the Santu Spirtu in Rabat, a premises that is not suitable for the storage of such precious archives, and six other buildings.