Six Trophies and a Funeral: Performance and Football in the City of Valletta GARY ARMSTRONG Brunel University JON MITCHELL University of Sussex This paper examines the elaborate celebrations organized by the fans of Valletta City football (soccer) club, Malta, when they win the Maltese football league. It argues that these celebrations constitute a continuation of the carnivalesque. Valletta fans have a reputation for their fanatical support, and are renowned as tough-guys. Their celebrations are moments of drunken excess, which celebrate this “diamond-in-the-rough” authenticity, and satirize their opponents, which they see as inauthentic “pretenders.” The celebrations use symbolism drawn from an earlier carnival tradition—particularly the symbolism of death, and the re-enactment of funereal performance. The paper therefore argues that contemporary football celebration has replaced the carnival as a cultural form through which social antagonisms—of locality and social class—are manifest. The paper also examines the relationship between these spontaneous celebrations, and state-sponsored pageants—including the modern carnival—which are primarily aimed at tourists. [Football Celebration, Valletta, Carnival, Nostalgia, Class]. Not for another 100 years T he 2000/01 championship was Valletta Football Club’s eighteenth league title, but was exceptionally memorable for their clean sweep of all domestic trophies: Championship, Super Cup, FA Trophy, Euro Trophy and Super Five Cup. They added to these the Centenary Cup, sponsored to commemorate 100 years of the Malta Football Association (MFA). Beating their historic rivals and neighbours Floriana 3–1 in the final, Valletta fans were able to goad their Floriana counterparts with chants of “not for another 100 years.” The Valletta City whitewash was all the sweeter for the turn-around the team had achieved since losing the title the City & Society, Vol. 18, Issue 2, pp. 180-206, ISSN 0893-0465, online ISSN 1548-744X. © 2006 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s Rights and Permissions website, http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintInfo.asp. DOI: 10.1525/city.2006.18.2.180. Six Trophies and a Funeral previous year to the arriviste new rivals, Birkirkara. Under a new coach, Bulgarian Krasimir Manolov, they had taken just 12 months to build a strong, spirited and successful team to match the quality of their fanatical fans. In April 2001, the first round of what was to be a month of football-related celebration took place in Valletta, not far from a bar known formerly as “The Pub” but now as “Ollie’s Last Drink” after the British actor Oliver Reed, who slumped to his death there during an eight-hour drinking session in the company of British sailors and local Maltese. The celebration party took place at the same time as the state-sponsored Valletta History and Elegance pageant: a genteel blend of historical re-enactment and period performance laid on ostensibly for tourists, but also billed as part of the campaign to “give (night) life” to the once vibrant but now nocturnally moribund city. The irony that many of its events were organized during the day was apparently lost on its organizers, but not on Valletta’s citizens, who engaged in their own project of lifegiving at this time of celebration. They were familiar with government projects that appeared to ignore the inhabitants of Valletta in favor of its tourists and other visitors to this UNESCO World Heritage Site (Mitchell 2002a:50ff). As with other such occasions, the Valletta celebrants were effectively banned from the city’s central and respectable public squares, and instead toasted their team’s victories in the topographically and socially “lower” areas1—close to the city bastions and on the steps of the Siege Bell Monument erected in 1992 to commemorate 50 years since the award of the George Cross to Malta—“For Gallantry” and to “Bear witness to the heroism and devotion of its people” during the 1942 Axis Siege. As a social and structural opposite of the Valletta History and Elegance event, the Valletta City victory party was a spontaneous and joyous occasion—much more in keeping with Reed’s hell-raiser legacy. For over four hours, the revellers drank, sang and cheered as they listened to speeches celebrating Valletta’s victories, joined in with popular anthems and laughed as children and adults alike took their turn at the microphone to perform songs and eulogies to the city and its club. Two weeks later, a grand defilé was organized that was every bit as joyous as the victory party, but surpassed it in the reckless consumption of alcohol it involved (see Mitchell and Armstrong 2005). It reproduced a processional tradition established in the early 1940s and appropriated from the pre-Lenten Carnival, at which large decorated floats with dancers file through Valletta’s City Gate and into one of its main squares. The Carnival receives generous state support, and is central to the National Tourism 181 City & Society Organisation’s policy of encouraging off-peak tourism to Malta. Many of the Carnival artists, who receive state subsidies, are also staunch Valletta City supporters, and use the Carnival’s low-load trailers for Valletta victory defilés. Mimicking the Carnival parade, then, not only reclaims Valletta’s public space on behalf of the citizen supporters, it also effectively appropriates the state’s resources to generate a performative event more in keeping with the wishes of the city’s inhabitants. This paper examines these football celebrations—the party, the defilé, and a third manifestation, il-funeral (the funeral)—as part of a wider politics of ritual performance and performative space in the city. As with the contrast of the Valletta History and Elegance celebrations and the Valletta City party, this politics pits outsider events against insider, “respectable” bourgeois pageant against popular cultural manifestations, and encompasses serial appropriations of ritual form and symbol from a large repertoire available in the numerous celebrations of the Maltese annual calendar. Malta is renowned for its staunch Roman Catholicism. Well over 90% of the population are Catholic, and a large proportion of them are regularly practising. Its strong Catholic history ensures a packed ritual calendar, with numerous saints’ feasts—festi, (sing. festa)—added to the regular annual cycle of religious feasts: Christmas, Carnival, Easter, All Souls etc. A small island state in the geographical center of the Mediterranean, Malta has around 460,000 permanently registered inhabitants, although at any one time there are many more than this. Serial colonization of the islands since 1530, by the Knights of St John, the French and the British, has meant that the Maltese are no strangers to visitors, and many retired Northern Europeans (particularly British) have taken up residency on the island (King, Warnes and Williams 2000), together with overseas students, businessmen seeking tax exile and aspirant migrants from various parts of Africa. Tourism development has been high on the national agenda since independence from British rule in 1964, and there are currently over one million tourist arrivals to Malta each year. Since the 1990s there has been a concerted emphasis on historical and cultural tourism, alongside the more traditional sea and sun package tourism (see Mitchell 1996). This has meant an increase in heritage-style tourist museums—with experiential installations and re-enactments—and festival events, such as Valletta History and Elegance. In this context, football celebrations are not only for “the people” but also for “the locals”—celebratory events to which tourists are not particularly invited, and are unlikely to show up. They are also events which tourists are unlikely to understand. 182 Six Trophies and a Funeral Doing so requires an understanding of the various symbolic forms these manifestations use, and of the historical and social context in which they take place. The authors have gained this understanding through ethnographic research in Malta over a considerable timeframe: Armstrong since the 1970s and Mitchell since the early 1990s. This paper forms part of a larger project on the relationships between Maltese football and Maltese society, for which the authors have conducted extensive qualitative interviews with those involved in local football at all levels, and have both participated with and observed football fans as they follow their teams to defeat and victory. Some of this work has also involved Maltese friends and acquaintances, who have acted as key informants and/or informal research assistants, giving contextual explanations and translations of particular manifestations or football chants. This long-term engagement and insider contextualization enabled us to understand the significance of, for example, writing football-related lyrics to the tunes of popular festa band marches, dressing up in Roman robes and armor from the city’s Good Friday procession, and borrowing symbolic motifs from Carnival. Carnival to carnivalesque F ollowing Bakhtin (1984), Stallybrass and White (1986) argued that with the onset of modernity, traditional Carnival, as a popular manifestation that subverted the social order and established morality in a pre-Lenten period of vulgarity and ribald excess, became occluded. This was partly through its classification by the nascent bourgeoisie as a backward tradition. As Collier (1997) has pointed out, modernity itself is characterized by the tendency to identify and classify certain practices as traditional—the better to abolish them, and thus purify the modern world (see also Latour 1993; Van der Veer 1998; Mitchell 2002b). It was also therefore partly through direct legislation aimed at suppressing Carnival: in the long-term history from the seventeenth to the twentieth century…there were literally thousands of acts of legislation introduced which attempted to eliminate carnival and popular festivity from European life. (Stallybrass and White 1986:78) Bakhtin argued that with this suppression, what he saw as the genuinely utopian and potentially transformative characteristics of Carnival were lost. Setting it within the context of the extremely 183 City & Society Where Carnival was not removed by legislation it was substantively transformed, through its standardization and bureau– cratization hierarchical feudal society from which Carnival sprung, Bakhtin argued that it provided the peasantry with a “second life” (1984:8) ruled not by landlord and clergy but by laughter. During Carnival, hierarchy was suspended or even inverted, with the most marginal members of village society being elected Carnival King (see Babcock 1978). Normal and normative morality was replaced by a celebration of vulgarity, and the social order was replaced by a different order collectively orchestrated by the people, who through this established a collective rebellious spirit that held the potential for radical transformation. Seen most dramatically in Ladurie’s (1980) account of the late sixteenth century Carnival in Romans, southeast of Lyons, this rebellious spirit of the Carnival enabled a utopian vision of social life that “lies beyond existing social forms” (Bakhtin 1984:280). Where Carnival was not removed by legislation it was substantively transformed, through its standardization and bureaucratization, which replaced the rebellious and creative celebration with an empty and ineffectual form that was merely the sterile object of consumption: “the carnival spirit with its freedom, its utopian character oriented towards the future, was gradually transformed into a mere holiday mood” (Bakhtin 1984:33). For Bakhtin, however, the spirit of the Carnival is never fully obliterated, but rather re-emerges in other contexts—most notably the literature of Rabelais—which become vehicles for, and characterized, by what he terms the carnivalesque. Utilizing the language of psychoanalysis, Stallybrass and White (1986) identify in Bakhtin’s argument a process of sublimation, wherein repressed, forbidden laughter emerges in other, more socially acceptable contexts. This displacement of the carnivalesque from Carnival proper has been identified in a range of other contexts—from modernist fiction (White 1993) to 1950s comedy film (Sobshack 1996) to the British seaside (Webb 2005). One need not necessarily buy into a psychoanalytic agenda to observe these processes, though. As Stallybrass and White correctly observe, the evidence for sublimation is less compelling than the more straightforward observation of historical change: Bakhtin…does not give us a convincing explanation of this sublimation of carnival. The social historians, on the other hand, tend not to consider processes of sublimation at all…They tend not to believe in the return of the repressed. (Stallybrass and White 1986:81). Evidence from social anthropology, however, suggests the social historians too readily proclaimed the death of the carnivalesque 184 Six Trophies and a Funeral in European popular culture. Contrary to expectation, and to the modernist narrative outlined above—which sees tradition banished from modern life as a backwards anomaly—Boissevain (1992) identifies a revitalization of popular ritual forms in late twentieth century Europe. And paradoxically, it is the conditions of modernity that Boissevain cites as the causes of this revitalization: widespread critique of post-war industrialization; crisis over the homogenizing effects of globalization; increased leisure time afforded by new affluence; counter-stream migration from urban to rural areas; and a liberalization of political regimes in a number of European states—all contributed to the renewed salience and scale of popular ritual forms, particularly those that involved ludic, play, or carnivalesque elements (Boissevain 1992:147). A short history of Valletta carnival T he pattern identified by Boissevain is replicated in Malta more broadly and Valletta in particular. Moreover, his historicized account enables us to describe the maintenance and transformation of the carnivalesque in Maltese popular ritual without necessarily buying into a psychoanalytic account of repression and sublimation. We are sceptical of psychoanalytic explanations of sociocultural phenomena because of its assumption that collectivities operate psychologically in the same way as individuals. To argue that a sociocultural phenomenon such as carnival is suppressed and then revitalized relies on tracing processes of historical causation, rather than assuming repression and sublimation. It requires careful attention to continuities and changes, and to the historical contexts of action. The earliest records of carnival in Malta date from the early fifteenth century, some 100 years before the Knights of the Order of St John of Jerusalem were given control of the islands (Cassar Pullicino 1992:48). During the time of the Knights (1530 to 1798), it was encouraged by the Grand Masters, partly as it allowed them to demonstrate their largesse to the Maltese peasantry, who received meat, sausages and other rich foods, and partly as it allowed them to organize sporting events—jousting, rowing—(Fiorini 1987) to entertain the young and energetic Knights, who were prone to restlessness in their isolated and celibate state. One of the central elements of the Knights’ period carnival was the Parata, a sword dance commemorating the victory of the Knights over the Turks in 1565, and therefore also the foundation of the city of Valletta. After taking over the islands, the Knights 185 City & Society established their capital in the harbor-town of Birgu, where a previous ruler had established a fort. In 1565, however, the folly of this decision was revealed, when an invading Turkish army were able to set up an artillery battery on the higher ground of the Xiberras peninsula—opposite the city—and bombard besieged Birgu. After the siege was lifted, then Grand Master, Jean Parisot de La Valette, established the new capital on the Xiberras peninsula, naming it after himself, and then rather perversely equipping it with the motto Humillima Civitas Valletae—the most humble city. A purpose-built city, Valletta consists of a grid-iron street system, running parallel and perpendicular across the peninsula. With its humped-back topography, many of the streets have steep gradients, and even had to be stepped rather than paved. A religious city and a military city—like the Order that created it—Valletta is dominated architecturally by churches and bastions, many of which are decorated in the ornate style of the Baroque. As the main port city, it is the axis around which Malta has revolved for several centuries, as administrative, mercantile and social centre. It is referred to by Maltese not as Valletta but Il-Belt (the city); its inhabitants are Beltin or Tas-City (of the city), and its football club ‘the citizens’. It is also the center of the carnival; and the inextricable links between the city, its history and the carnival are confirmed in the carnival practice of Parata. Parata is a form of sword-dance that commemorates victory over the Turks, with companies of young men or children dressed as Christians and Turks to fight a mock re-enactment of the siege (Cassar Pullicino 1992:49). Cassar (1994) has argued that the significance of the siege—and particularly its status as an event bringing together Knights and Maltese—was exaggerated by the Knights as a means of generating pro-Order propaganda during their rule. Its centrality in carnival contributed to this propaganda. Parata was offered by Maltese in return for carnival. To start the carnival, groups of Maltese peasants would wake the Grand Master early on carnival Saturday, and ask permission for the carnival. When the answer came, various companies of dancers would move through the city performing the mock fight (Cassar Pullicino 1992:49). During the time of carnival, justice was suspended. A stone or plank was hung outside the Palace of Justice in Valletta, which impeded the operation of the strappado, which was the most common form of public justice (50). Crowds of masked or blackened-faced revellers would run through the streets, blowing on trumpets and whistles, to celebrate this period of excess (48), and a number of sacrificial and funereal manifestations were organized. 186 Six Trophies and a Funeral At the end of the Parata, a small girl dressed as a bride was held aloft, as a symbol of fertility and the enduring spirit of Malta. Later in the carnival, a bridal figure was made of pastry, and carried through the streets by a riotous and drunken crowd who played music and recited the bride’s marriage deed—in humorous verse—before pulling her apart and eating her in a drunken sacrifice of fecundity (50). The end of the carnival was marked by another sacrifice—of King Carnival; a linen and straw effigy that was burned after being carried through the streets on a trestle, to great wailing and mourning (52). It was also common to organize mock funerals in which a person would be carried in a coffin, surrounded by mourners, only to come alive and cause mischief (Wilson 1839:38–40). This funereal motif was to return in the footballing celebrations of the early twenty-first century, having also been utilized in politically satirical Carnival floats of the early twentieth. By the nineteenth century, these spontaneous elements of carnival were being replaced by more formal processions with decorated floats. The nineteenth century saw the advent of British colonial rule (1800–1964) and with it both the increase of elegant indoor masked balls (Cassar Pullicino 1992:51), and the increased politicisation of carnival. The mid-nineteenth century saw the emergence of a new form of popular manifestation—the festa, or saint’s feast. Present earlier as part of the organized Church’s calendar of liturgical celebrations, from this time, more elaborate popular outdoor festivities emerged and quickly accelerated in popularity and scale. Processions of saints’ statues, brass band marches and lavish fireworks displays became avenues of not only celebration but also competition between different neighborhoods, villages, parishes and political parties (Boissevain 1965). In Valletta which was then divided into two parishes: of St Paul and of St Dominic2, each developed its own festa, with a fierce rivalry against each other. Each had its own brass band club—St Dominic’s had the Kings Own; St Paul’s La Valette—which would compete at band competitions until La Valette commemorated a victory in the Italian lake resort of Como by commissioning a new banner to be carried in front of the band. At its first unveiling, supporters of Kings Own intercepted the march and the resulting riot saw both direct competition and the carrying of the banner, banned. Each parish had—and still has—its own topographically low areas, which are also thought of as “rough;” and where young men enjoy the reputation of tough-guys with a kind of diamond in the rough character (Mitchell 2002a). The citizens’ reputation as fighters (gelliedin) was honed in band and festa fights, but also in violence associated with party 187 City & Society politics, and of course football. Party politics emerged in Malta in the later nineteenth century under a colonial administration that allowed representative government (Frendo 1979). Politics soon became polarized between a broadly pro-British, pro-Maltese and eventually socialist party and an Italianate party that was Christian democratic in its approach, and nationalist by name if not always by inclination. The cleavage between the two became particularly significant during the so-called Language Question of the 1920s and 30s, when government was debating the appropriate medium for education in Maltese schools (Hull 1993). The nationalists, who historically drew support from the mercantile and professional classes of Valletta—the clergy and the judiciary, both of which operated in Italian—favored Italian. Their opponents, on the other hand, favored a combination of Maltese, the local idiom, and English, signalling not only a pragmatic attachment to the British colonial administration, but also a deeper appreciation of all things British, that was later to lead to the Malta Labour Party’s suggestion in 1956 that Malta become part of the United Kingdom (Austin 1971). During the Language Question, the political situation became so tense that the constitution was suspended. At the same time, the carnival became regulated. It had become a significant vehicle for political satire by the anti-colonial nationalists. As a nationalist stronghold, Valletta provided the labor and resources to build and man large and elaborate floats depicting the British Governor, and the leaders of the pro-British Constitutional Party. Photographs from the era depict floats bearing slogans denouncing British slavery of Maltese, the financial costs of membership of the Empire and, significantly, the funereal motif. One such photograph shows an effigy of Gerald Strickland, leader of the Constitutional Party, holding the lid of a coffin on which is written, in Italian, “After a century of English domination.” Next to him is the open coffin, in which a live person, dressed as a skeleton, sits and grins, waiting for his moment to “come alive.” In 1926, this political content of carnival floats was banned, by an increasingly paranoid British administration. With the ban was established a carnival committee to veto plans for floats, and much of what older Vallettans still regard as the spirit of the carnival, was lost. This much tallies with Bakhtin’s account of the suppression of carnival, and the removal from it of much of its creative spontaneity. Valletta carnivals have become somewhat staid events; the more spontaneous masked and blackened revellers have disappeared, as have the ranging Parata troops. Dancing and parading is now performed to a strict timetable and set of regulations, in 188 Six Trophies and a Funeral a purpose-built arena close to the City Gate, to a paying audience—largely tourists. The popular spontaneity of carnival has been replaced by the more ordered celebration of festa which, despite having extreme moments of celebratory excess—dancing, singing, drunkenness—does not possess the carnivalesque irreverence and vulgarity. That is reserved for football celebrations, which have also taken on the sacrificial and funereal imagery now absent from carnival. The potency of carnival, for Bakhtin, is the creativity with which norms and ideologies are inverted. Inversion necessitates a borrowing, or appropriation, of sociocultural forms—symbols or forms of performance—a process that is also central to satire. The same can be said of the potency of Valletta football celebrations, which borrow from the range of other performances to generate a particular version of the carnivalesque. Despite being Malta’s administrative Pride in authenticity—Valletta and its opponents D espite being Malta’s administrative capital, Valletta has declined significantly as a city since the 1970s. With the withdrawal of the British fleet in 1979, its sailor bars closed down, and the center for entertainment moved to the tourist resort of Paceville on the north shore of the island. Valletta has suffered over five decades of outmigration (Sultana and Baldacchino 1994:135–161). Initially this was provoked by a wish to avoid the bombings of the Axis forces of the Second World War. In the first months of 1942 Axis forces conducted 263 air-raids over Malta, destroying more than 11,000 dwellings in the Grand Harbour and Naval Dockyards area. Then came post-war migration subsidized monetarily by Government from 1948 via the Emigration Passage Assistance Scheme. This response to post-war economic stagnation saw thousands of Maltese depart for Australia, the UK, the USA and Canada. Further emigration occurred in the mid-1970s when low wages and high unemployment saw an increasing penetration of female workers into the labor force and with this geographic mobility increased (Delia 1994). Many Valletta inhabitants wished to leave the old and less versatile Valletta housing—much of which dated back to the time of the Knights—to make new homes in the villages and suburbs; others were removed under government regeneration and relocation projects (see Mitchell 1998). Valletta is thus today a city in name only and has a population—8,000—smaller than many villages in Malta. Still the main administrative center, and an important shopping centre, Valletta capital, Valletta has declined significantly as a city since the 1970s 189 City & Society nevertheless sees upwards of 40,000 people enter the city each day, on business of various types. Many more than 8,000 Maltese claim Valletta origins. The scale of outmigration ensures that the “Beltin diaspora” within Malta is large. The pride with which this identity is claimed is significant. As suggested above, being Tas-City is seen as something to be proud of—connoting a certain no-nonsense stoicism and toughness of both spirit and body. Moreover, it is something which unites the various and frequently antagonistic social groupings within the city: richer and poorer; higher and lower; St Paul’s and St Dominic’s; Nationalist and Malta Labour Party—all come together in support of “the citizens.” In the world of football, bringing together Valletta supporters inevitably does so in opposition to others. As we have outlined elsewhere (Armstrong and Mitchell 2001), Valletta’s most significant others have changed over the course of the last century, as new opponents have risen and fallen. This was related not only to the threat of stronger footballing opponents, but also to local, political and social class antagonisms. Thus, their first and biggest rivals were Floriana, a team from the neighboring harbor-side town that shares its bastions and reputation as a tough sailor town. Post-Independence, when party politics became vehemently—at times violently—polarized, Valletta, as a prominent Nationalist stronghold found new opponents in the Labour-supporting villages of Hamrun and Paola, whose Hibernians team were fierce opponents. More recently, Birkirkara have emerged as new enemies. As a club, Birkirkara are regarded as arrivistes—wealthy and flashy, but without a long-term history of footballing success, and without the kind of substantial and fanatical fan-base that Valletta enjoy. As a town, Birkirkara is a thriving and expanding—predominantly bourgeois—settlement. It is genteel and spacious, while Valletta remains cramped and shabby—its glory lying mainly in the past. Birkirkara is the home of a new political elite. Throughout the 1990s, the leaders of both Nationalist and Labour parties lived in Birkirkara. The Nationalist leader, Eddie Fenech Adami was appointed national President in 2003 and continues to live there. Birkirkara, then, is seen by Valletta fans as an impostor opponent, that has achieved success through political or business patronage. Its fans are seen as imitators rather than innovators—modern fans interested only in their team if it was successful; not the authentic, traditional and die-hard fans that Valletta enjoy. The rivalry, then, pits Birkirkara’s inauthenticity against Valletta’s authenticity; Birkirkara’s modernity against Valletta’s tradition; Birkirkara’s bourgeois sensibilities against Valletta’s rough-and-ready proletarianism. 190 Six Trophies and a Funeral The Valletta-Birkirkara rivalry saved football in the late 1990s from disinterest and decline. These teams could command the biggest crowds in Malta; Birkirkara because of its large population and Valletta because of its large and extended fan-base across Malta, drawn in by footballing success and a reputation for joyous celebration, and the earthy, tough-guy image of Valletta as a whole. The 1996/7 and 1997/8 seasons saw late season championship decider matches between Valletta and Birkirkara attracting huge crowds— for Malta. Valletta won both, and the 1998 championship decider saw a record crowd of 18,000 at the national stadium in Ta’Qali. In 2000 a new championship format was introduced, with endof-season play-offs guaranteeing footballing drama to the very end of the season. Despite winning the championship again in 1999, Valletta failed twice to beat Birkirkara that season, making the rivalry in 2000 all the more potent. The season runs September to May, and by January 2000, Valletta had looked like title favorite. They then played Birkirkara and the teams drew a bad-tempered encounter 1–1. Four players were sent off from each side. By April, Valletta’s hopes of a fourth consecutive championship title were dwindling, and a series of apparently suspicious league results ensured that Birkirkara triumphed, but with enough tension to ensure another well-attended final game between the two. First, a Hibernians team weakened by injury beat Valletta 2–1 on Easter Sunday, then Sliema—by this time also contenders for the championship—lost to Birkirkara 2–0. The Sliema President publicly lambasted his players for this “gift-wrapped” Birkirkara victory, adding that “the team totally disobeyed the coach’s instructions. Not one shot or goal in 90 minutes from the most in-form team in the division, with three consecutive victories.” Valletta supporters felt sure that the Sliema players had been bribed to lose, perhaps along with some of their own players in the Hibernians match. One important Hibernians player was allegedly offered Lm 4,0003 to play badly against Valletta. His refusal came not out of morality, it was said, but financial acumen—Birkirkara had offered him more to play well and win the game. Finally, a Valletta player was rumored to have been promised Lm 20,000 by Birkirkara if they won the league. The resulting intrigue ensured that the final match of the season was something of a grudge match. Although Birkirkara had already won the title, and for them this was a celebration, Valletta fans were keen to see a fair game, to reassure themselves that Birkirkara had in fact bought the championship, and so Valletta could remain moral victors. Birkirkara fans celebrated with an extensive defilé, which began mid-morning on the Sunday of the final Birkirkara—Valletta The VallettaBirkirkara rivalry saved football in the late 1990s from disinterest and decline 191 City & Society fixture. It ended around 1am on Monday. The national media provided saturation coverage of the event. On the Friday before the Sunday game, Smash TV had interviewed players and officials of Birkirkara. On the day of the game, one TV station and three radio stations dedicated live time to the journey to the stadium and the game itself. By 2pm, some 5,000 Birkirkara “stripes” fans were in the vicinity of Ta’Qali in a flotilla of vehicles, singing and dancing, and drinking. Articulated lorries were bedecked with effigies, stereo systems and celebrants. Unroad-worthy cars, painted in yellow and red stripes, in celebration of the Birkirkara team strip, followed the procession. Insults to Valletta were painted on vehicles and sung by the revellers. The late arrival of thousands seeking to enter the stadium meant that the planned police searches were abandoned in the crush, and thus many entered holding beer bottles, whilst others set off petards and other fireworks at will. The game ended in a 5–1 victory for Birkirkara’s in front of over 8,000 ecstatic fans. It was Birkirkara’s biggest-ever win over Valletta. The Valletta fans played their part, chanting repeatedly “Birkirkara Xejn” (Birkirkara are nothing), and reminding the jubilant fans of their 50 years of non-achievement. A Valletta banner reading “Lhaqtu l’Bormla” (You’ve caught up with Bormla/ Cospicua) demeaned their championship victory by reminding them that their victory was now equal to that of local football minnows, Cospicua, who had also only won the league once—in 1914. Valletta fans were disappointed at the defeat, but also angry at the Birkirkara fans’ emulation of their own football celebrations. Rather than a creative appropriation of festive form from carnival or festa, this was direct imitation. Unable to raise a brass band from amongst their supporters, which Valletta could do any time, Birkirkara had obtained special permission from the football authorities to install stereo speakers in their ranks to aid their cacophony. When the truck with a p.a. system passed the Valletta enclosure on its way to the Birkirkara fans, it was met with a hail of bottles. The songs of Birkirkara, which had their origin in Valletta celebrations, were met with shouts of “imitators” and “invent your own.” Even the victory celebrations of the Birkirkara team replicated those of Valletta the previous season—crawling in a line, imitating a dying fly, synchronized diving. The Valletta fans left the ground desultory and angry, their mood becoming more furious as they watched a rival climb a flag pole at the opposite end of the stadium, and set fire to the Valletta club flag. Police had to restrain the surging Valletta fans, who fumed at this ultimate insult. Post-match, the defilé reached central Birkirkara at around 8pm. Around 10,000 people awaited their heroes; women and 192 Six Trophies and a Funeral children at the back and on the walls, men and boys in the middle of the road. The team arrived on the back of a tipper truck ahead of ten other long-wheel trailers. The jubilation was deafening as the victors took the acclaim of the band club, which held a banner with the face of Club President Victor Zammit painted on it, saint-like. The parade ended at the club’s bar above McDonald’s. Songs continued into the night. Around midnight the only bar with easy access to a drink was the Labour Party club, wherein a sole Birkirkara player stood drinking whiskey and smoking, whilst chatting with a dozen locals. The personality cult of Zammit was extended the following Friday evening, when the club held a rally in the village square on the forecourt of the parish church of St. Helen. Lasting two hours, the gathering attracted around 1,500 curious onlookers, many of them families with children, who listened to various speakers over the p.a. system, as they sat in majesty on the trailer of a truck with tables and chairs. Meanwhile, a telephone hot-line for financial donations was set up by the club. Pledges of Lm 10, Lm 5, and Lm 3 were possible. A celebratory CD was soon in circulation with vocals by an established local singer by the name of Renato, who sang a line of “Viva Birkirkara, we’ve annoyed Valletta.” A few weeks later, the man proclaimed the savior of Birkirkara was rumored to have lost a fortune in a failed business venture. The club was bankrupt, and internet messages informed readers that, if they had money and loved Birkirkara, they should come forward and take over. It seemed the Valletta fans’ view of Birkirkara as a precarious club, with flimsy financial backing rather than deep roots in football tradition, was confirmed. Return to victory— or “how to have a real defile” T he first euphoric parade to celebrate a Valletta victory was in 1943. It was more than just a spectacle. Occurring in 1943 it was also a response to a call which beckoned back local émigrés who had abandoned their homes because of the heavy bombardments on the Grand Harbour. The parade might also be considered, like the earlier carnival manifestations, an act of emerging nationalistic defiance in the face of colonial government, and an expression of triumph of spirit in the face of a reality of a physically devastated town. Such spirit was embodied in the victory of their newly formed team, which though just starting out had succeeded 193 City & Society against the old, established and preferred teams in winning the championship. Valletta F.C. had been established the same year when five of the fourteen clubs that existed in the city joined together to conform to a new Malta Football Association (MFA) regulation that permitted only one club per town, village or city. The MFA were concerned about intra-town rivalries, but the move to “one town, one team” merely shifted antagonisms from within different towns to between them (Armstrong and Mitchell 2001). The 1943 victory was over Valletta’s traditional rivals Floriana, and occurred at the same time the island was recovering from the Axis bombing of the Valletta harbor area—Malta’s second “Great Siege.” The elderly of Valletta recall the defilé as an event where people manifested hitherto unseen elation, which went beyond celebration of a football victory and was more a re-affirmation of the vitality of a war-devastated city and population. Following the match, thousands of fans followed their victorious team back to Valletta, on foot or on the backs of trucks, many of which also carried brass bands. They shouted, cheered and sang their way back the four miles from the stadium in Gzira to their bomb-devastated city. This defilé is now repeated whenever Valletta F.C. wins the championship. In the early 1980s, the Empire Stadium at Gzira was replaced as the national stadium by Ta’Qali, some eight miles from Valletta, but the parade still attracts thousands of Vallettans as it winds its way back to the capital. Valletta had won the league two weeks before the end of the 2000–2001 season, and had celebrated royally at the Siege Bell, but reserved the defilé for the final day of the season. The days between the celebration and the defilé were ones of frantic preparation by the fans. Superstition prevented them from preparing in advance any of the paraphernalia, the Maltese proverb Ahseb fil-hazin biex it-tajjeb ma jonqosx (Expect the bad so you don’t lose the good) dictating this relative inactivity prior to the moment of victory. What onlookers witnessed was not simply a spontaneous expression of euphoria but a measured ritualistic celebration of Valletta identity, drawing on the traditions and spirit of the carnival to generate performance that inverts the social order in significant ways—presenting Valletta fans as heroes, rather than villains of the piece, and Valletta as triumphant and glorious, instead of the rather shabby, disintegrating and down-at-heel city that it is. This is achieved through straightforward assertion, but also through an appropriation of otherness, particularly the Islamic other to this staunchly Catholic country. Whilst the event was undoubtedly determined by football and took place around the final game of league championship, what 194 Six Trophies and a Funeral took place around the game was a spectacular celebration of both collective identity encompassed within shared perceptions of cultural memory. The constructs that were evident on the trucks and floats took in some instances two weeks to prepare. Meetings with the police and the city councillors had to take place to agree the limits of the possible, be it what vehicles could drive on what street and what street furniture could be festooned with football ephemera. The Transport Authority had to agree to move dozens of buses from the terminus immediately outside the City Gate—what was considered in normal time as a notoriously time-consuming process was miraculously agreed in double-quick time. The whole nation, down to its frequently awkward officialdom, wanted to be part of or witness the Valletta fans’ celebration. The team’s triumphal return from Ta’Qali reached its climax with the entrance of the huge trailer holding the players, the football club committee and the trophy through the City Gate upon which was a massive reproduction of the Centenary Cup. The float arrived in a mass of red smoke courtesy of the plumes of fireworks and petards and a cacophonous rendition of “We Are the Champions’ via the enormous p.a. system on board. The float was so high that the fixtures grazed the City Gate ceiling. A retinue of trucks and trailers followed, ranging from four to sixteen wheelers bedecked in carnival paraphernalia—papier maché figures ridiculing characters seen as antagonists. Here there was little of the regulation or restriction that surrounded carnival. Official (club registered) floats’ themes do require approval from the organizing committee, but none have ever been refused. Whilst the football committee warns supporters to refrain from anything that may portray Valletta in a bad light, this doesn’t not prevent participants from daubing all manner of insults, nicknames, jibes and insinuations on vehicles and banners aimed at the opposing team’s players, coaches and committee presidents. Recognizable characters from the football world—who were often also prominent political actors—were depicted and satirized mercilessly, displaying and revealing the enduring creative talent and capacity for ridicule and merrymaking: the carnivalesque. The chosen theme of each float is written alongside the float, e.g. Kif knisnikom u xkupajnikom (How we swept you away); and as in carnival, they were signed by their creators, in the style of works of art. There were at least 100 vehicles in the procession, some officially part of the proceedings, others not. The celebration had begun mid-morning even though the final match did not kick off until 8 o’clock in the evening. Thus, by the time the parade arrived at the stadium, most people had had a drink or two, and the major195 City & Society Public drunkenness was not merely committed, it was expected 196 ity could be said to have been under the influence of alcohol. At this stage, though, there was a sense of moderation and only a few participants were seriously drunk. The same could not be said of the same people by 10 o’clock. On the return to Valletta, crates of beer adorned every truck and bottles of beer were an essential accoutrement to the football paraphernalia worn by every participant. Beer both local and Belgian—Stella Artois brewery sponsored the Valletta team shirt—were the essential items of consumption. The raised bottles manifest on every float were reciprocated by those following and a shower of beer was not received with anger but in the spirit of this occasion. Normal taboos about female and children drinking were suspended. Public drunkenness was not merely committed, it was expected. Behind the defilé a trail of broken and discarded beer bottles marked the path of celebration. While the central focus of the parade was obviously the triumphant football team, pride of place on the largest truck was also taken by club committee members. That said, the boys of the Valletta nursery team were aboard the first float that entered the city. Their float depicted the lion of Valletta with his arms around those in his care on the float. On the other floats the participants were predominantly male whilst the expectant crowd that thronged the main thoroughfare of Valletta was mixed—at least 50% female. This matches the pattern of festa, in which a predominantly male procession performs to a mixed audience (Mitchell 2002a:233). The parade headed into the capital with dozens of unofficial vehicles joining impromptu at the end. Bedecked, graffiti covered and overloaded vehicles of all sorts flowed into Valletta. It all came to an end in the Great Siege Square—dedicated to the Siege victories of 1565 and 1942—which lies at the junction of Republic Street and St Lucia Street, in front of the symbols of legal justice, the Courts of Law, and of divine justice, the Co-Cathedral of St. John. This ending place, appropriately symbolic of victory and justice, is the closest point to the humbly located and proportioned Valletta F.C. bar in adjacent St Lucia Street. It took over two hours for every vehicle to pass through the City Gate, which meant the defilé proper ended around midnight. The party continued and by 3 am was centred on the club bar in which some 300 revellers sang along to songs that blared out from the p.a. system. The floor was awash with beer, and four players, finding it difficult to stand, heroically continued drinking beer bought by loyal fans. Outside, a self-appointed squad of responsible fans gathered debris from the streets to leave them clean for the morning arrival of office workers, shoppers and tourists. The newspapers reported the collection of three tons of discarded beer bottles. Six Trophies and a Funeral Valletta in song and dance T he costumes themselves are almost entirely based on the team colors—red and white. One float theme featured dozens of men dressed in sailor’s whites, recalling Malta’s naval colonial past, but specifically symbolizing the notorious reputation afforded Valletta by the British Navy. It had been an important sailor town with numerous bars, night-clubs and brothels, particularly in Strait Street, know as “the gut”. Now largely closed down, these establishments served the needs of countless British sailors on shore leave from their ships. Opponents insulted the Valletta supporters by claiming that Citizens fans are tfal tal-bahrin—sailors’ children.4 By appropriating this insult, the Valletta revellers were able to turn their bad reputation into an object of pride, emphasizing not the anti-colonial elements of their history, but the extent to which the people of Valletta had stood alongside the British during times of struggle and victory—the flip-side of Malta’s ambivalent attitude towards its past (Mitchell 2002a). Valletta’s past was also evidenced in the costumes worn by a group of men donning the attire of the medieval knights, reminding all of the noble origins of their town. Another group recalled past geographic and maritime importance via their pirate costumes. Clowns were a frequent representation meant to reminding all of Valletta’s cherished carnival tradition, and their enviable talent of impromptu merrymaking. A party of women opted for cowgirl costumes, confirming another generic term aimed at denigrating the citizens—that of being “cowboys.” The colloquial Maltese phrase, Kemm int cowboy (What a cowboy you are), usually indicates a braggart, a scoundrel, or incompetence. Other variants on the oriental or the oriental-robes theme made direct reference to Tal-Palestina— Palestinians—another one of the many appellations bound to Valletta repute. Although vehemently anti-Arab and violently critical of any argument about Malta’s Arab past, the reference to Beltin being Tal-Palestina, and even dressing in Arab costumes, again appropriates an image of otherness in pursuit of the tough-guy image of the citizens’ fans. The unfurling of the flag of Palestine at games was common, and augmented here by the presence of a float containing 20 men resplendent in full Arab costume. Musicians on the main triumphal float don Roman robes and victors’ laurel wreaths, which immediately establish their status as one of the primary elements in Valletta’s conceived identity—that of being musically inclined and gifted. This can also be seen through the presence of many well-known local singers 197 City & Society and musicians amongst the revellers while the native musician George il-Pusé Curmi, formed part of the brass band on the main float. Musically, Valletta fans have a genius for recontextualizing. Other clubs can only follow and slightly alter the lyrics. As a consequence the Valletta repertoire as evident in the parade includes samples from Latin America, Mambo, Neapolitan, Italian melodies old and new, rock anthems and Euro pop. Refrains of “Don’t cry for me Birkirkara” proved that London’s West End musicals could be adapted to Maltese antagonisms. The official Valletta football anthem, Forza Valletta City, is said to have been the first such anthem in Europe. Composed by a well known local composer, Willie Arena and written by the poet Scerkarm5, it was penned at a time when post-war colonial Malta itself was awakening to its own nationality depicted with fervor in the lyrics. The official Valletta (Forza) FC anthem makes reference to the mantra Up the Whites, whilst simultaneously stating Valletta: Champions of great courage No wonder ours is a rampant lion On the loveliest of backgrounds (red) Valletta we are so proud of you Because we are the children of Valletta Not even death will induce us to betray you Because you are the land we were born in We cannot help but love you. Such songs are invariably boasting of heritage, the talent for spectacle and a willingness to be inclusive. The song “Wave the Flags” (Xerju il-Bnadar) implores listeners to: Wave your flags White and red, with the lion at the centre To make merry and celebrate Our successful team Amongst the best Maltese teams around At the front you’ll find il-Beltin United by our cheerful band marches Clap and have fun Come along and join us Anyone can join in Everyone knows what fun we create And how to enjoy themselves once they join us Bring along your kids, womenfolk and elderly Because when it comes to merrymaking and a feast, we’re the best around. 198 Six Trophies and a Funeral The same fans invoke fierce pride and paternalism, yet also try to appear humble: We are Valletta’s children We love this land we were born in Everyone is against us We, the children of Palestine Because we are the offspring of Ferocious lions All fear Valletta Euphoric, colorful and free of injury, the celebration was transmitted live from its beginnings to very late by all three national TV stations. Not all football victories would merit such coverage but the Valletta celebrations were legendary. Both police and bus inspectors joined in the occasion, urging travellers to show patience with changing schedules and encouraging spontaneous car-pooling to get home those who had missed the last or cancelled buses. The next day’s front page carried images of the night and the celebrations were discussed by columnists and TV talk-shows. The kill-joys had their moments too: comments were made about unroad-worthy and unlicensed vehicles in the procession, about the illegal use of petards and about the prevalence of drunkenness and litter. The crowds involved, be they parading or spectating, numbered around 40,000. Nearly one in ten of the population of Malta was involved in some way with this football carnival. Euphoric, colorful and free of injury, the celebration was transmitted live from its beginnings to very late by all three national TV stations Il-Funeral: Celebrating the dead F unereal images were a common feature of the classical Valletta carnival, and have an important place within popular Catholic imagery on a global scale. By the 1990s, this necro-drama had taken pride of place in Valletta’s football celebrations, when victory over Floriana saw a coffin bearing the green and white of Floriana processed through the city streets. Il-funeral (the funeral) has since then become a much-lauded ritualistic finale to the football season by Valletta’s die hard fans. It effectively enacts a public execution and burial of football enemies. Originally a modest occasion of mickey-taking, il-funeral has changed its route, its timing and attracted a wider audience since then. One Saturday morning, at the end of the 2000–2001 season, a coffin bearing the colors of both Floriana and Birkirkara appeared in Great Siege Square on tables draped with ecclesiastical cloths. Church candles were stood either side of the casket and flowers lay 199 City & Society at its base with a message offering tragic-comic condolences to the defeated opponents. The dozens of Valletta fans involved reserved their smiles for Maltese friends who were in on the act, and managed to keep a straight face when a group of tourists, keen to show their respect to their hosts, appeared with two large bouquets of flowers. After two hours of collecting money for the “deceased” and listening to the Forza Valletta anthems blaring from nearby speakers, the coffin was hoisted onto a trap and pulled by a horse around the streets with the funeral cortege walking slowly behind it drinking beer and laughing at their insolence. It is led by a fan dressed in clerical robes, to play the priest, and goes from bar to bar along Republic street. The accompanying brass bands do not limit their musical repertoire to dirges appropriate to death. The mood is playful and irreverent. At first sight the funeral procession looks authentic. A “cadaver”—actually a prostrate real human body—wearing full ceremonial robes of a catholic Cardinal, is carried in an open cask by pall-bearers in funeral attire with crucifix, mace and fraternity crest borrowed somehow from a local church. Accompanying these are men in a variety of religious costumes—of bishops, monsignors, nuns and standard- and candle-bearers. Behind and alongside these “officials” walk the Valletta F.C. committee members and other diehard fans. Beginning in the bastions of Fort St. Elmo the procession winds its way past the Sagra Infermeria (the Knights’ Hospital). Immediately behind the coffin as it approaches the higher part of the city is a brass band playing New Orleans Funeral blues. Suddenly the dead body comes alive and conveniently a glass of whiskey is placed in his hand. In true biblical tradition a miracle is performed and alcohol has played its part. The re-born raises his glass to the cheers and ridicule of the crowd. The makeshift coffin teeters precariously as the bearers feign drunkenness. The procession also includes the traditional mourners (bikkejja) who wail in sadness at the death. Characteristically for the event, though, the women who would normally wail were replaced by men in drag. Indeed all bar one of the participants in the funeral were male. The audience was 90% male. While “lifeless,” the body is carried in and out of various bars along the route. Each time, as it is offered a drink, the body comes to life. As it leaves the King’s Own Band Club, the body comes to life once more, raising its arms in synchronized movements, causing much mirth among the 300 or so spectators. As the ridicule and irreverence reach their peak, the body is carried lifeless until it enters Great Siege Square. The body then comes to life in stylized movements that mimic rigor mortis. Another three coffins 200 Six Trophies and a Funeral then appear, painted in the colors of the club’s main opponents: Floriana, Hibernians and Birkirkara. In a ceremony of mock seriousness, the painted coffins, together with the fourth minus its body, are slung on ropes and hung on four poles some ten meters high. The ropes are pulled and the coffins hoisted. As they rise to a brass band’s lament, a drum roll mimics an impending execution. At the final drum beat, huge cheers and raised glasses salute the four coffins as they dangle for 10 minutes or so, in symbolic death. Later, when the coffins are lowered a group of young boys kick the coffins to pieces. The cadaver and man of the moment is known to all by the nickname Ciccio after the Italian matinee comedian popular in the 1960s and 1970s. Aged 52, and both humble and generous, he is Valletta born and like his father before him, makes a living out of painting the floats of carnival. Fiercely proud of his trade and its decades-old association with Valletta, he is quick to berate the Maltese authorities for the way they promote the country and how they prefer ersatz re-enactments to genuine images and participation. Images of naked women abound in his workshop located on the harbor-side within the Valletta fortifications, which he shares with a cat, four kittens, and a rather savage dog. Working often until midnight, or in his reasoning “as long as it takes,” his workshop is a port of call for dozens of locals to pass the time of day or to volunteer their help on the murals and caricatures he is always working on. In return, they are invited to an annual party wherein food and alcohol are free. A wander round the workshop provides for dozens of images of fun, of music, of spectacle and laughter which at times compete and other times compliment the grotesque and the mocking all enacted in wood, metal, papermâché and pastel colours. Minute detail is dealt with—the façade of a Maltese house even contains ventilation ducts. Such precision is no doubt a factor behind his trophy cabinet which tells the curious that he is the winner of the annual carnival float some ten times. All his creations contain his signature. Taking commissions for carnival is only one source of income. Other designs are made to order and come from a variety of sources; film and theater sets, wedding backdrops and parades, and other football clubs’ celebrations. He has, however, to qualify the latter—he will not ever work on designs for Floriana or Birkirkara. His involvement in the defilé is an extension of his personal carnivalesque. Admitting that his involvement stems from his reputation as “the joker,” he explains to me that the reason il-funeral began in the Valletta is because of the residents’ involvement in carnival; and as one of the main carnival artists, he was also the chief protagonist of il-funeral. Over 201 City & Society the years, il-funeral had adapted to take advantage of the expedient. One year, he was placed in a coffin that was symbolically buried in trenches provided by workers replacing the utilities infrastructure. Other times, he was carried prostrate, only to come alive when repeatedly thrown in the air. A back injury prevented this being repeated. Conclusion W Both the Parade and the Funeral fit a Bakhtinian model of the carnivalesque— as transferred from carnival proper to the field of football celebrations 202 hereas Birkirkara represents the nouveau riches of Maltese society and Maltese football, Valletta stands for tradition and authenticity. Birkirkara evokes the modernity of newer political and business elites who despite their influence are, because of their very novelty, potentially fragile— likely to disappear as quickly as they have appeared. Valletta, on the other hand, has a deep history and deep footballing tradition. Although now a highly depopulated city, its diaspora across Malta is wide and strong—with people claiming even tenuous kinship links back to Valletta, and often actualizing them by entering the city weekly, monthly to participate in Valletta life, and particularly its celebrations: religious festi, and of course football celebrations. Both the Parade and the Funeral fit a Bakhtinian model of the carnivalesque—as transferred from carnival proper to the field of football celebrations. These celebrations have in recent years escalated, and taken on innovations and reinventions from the carnival repertoire. In particular, they have revitalized the tradition of biting personal satire of prominent public figures—and reinvented the funereal practices of a previous era. These were born in the era of colonialism, as critique of colonial power, through symbolic speculation on fertility and death. In the postcolonial era, the victory parade is not a triumph over colonial power, nor over death, but over perceived and real daily adversity and real and perceived sporting enemies both long-standing and recent. The parade provides for a momentary unity within the reality of Valletta’s ever potential social and political discord. It is a statement of distinction and dignity that actualizes a community ethos whilst celebrating reputations of disrepute (Mitchell 2002a). For whilst Birkirkara represent the polite and slick face of modern football—with massive corporate sponsorship and swish facilities—Valletta stands for a more earthy side of football, rooted above all in its fans, and their reputation for mischief-making. Such irreverence is part and parcel of successful football celebration, as it is also a central element in Bakhtin’s conception of Six Trophies and a Funeral the carnivalesque. For Bakhtin, carnival gave peasants a second life, ruled by laughter, rather than feudal landlords. It gave the Valletta citizen supporters an important repertoire of symbolic forms from which to creatively borrow. Carnival proper in Malta has gone the way predicted by Bakhtin and others—through bureaucratic standardization it has become a staid occasion, devoid of the creativity and irreverence characteristic of its earlier form. What remains, however, is a powerful carnivalesque impulse, as manifest in both Parade and Funeral, which subverts established religious norms, and offers a space in which opponents can be openly abused. These opponents are footballing rivals, but the rivalries are also related to wider social cleavages—of localism, party politics, and social class. Thus Floriana (local), Hamrun and Hibernians (party political) and Birkirkara (social class) draw particular attention from the mischievous carnivalesque satirists. It is an opportunity to ridicule and insult these enemies of the Beltin. The celebrations bring together the broad Valletta diaspora. In a Durkheimian sense, it strengthens the bonds of Valletta’s inhabitants and those who claim origins in the city. The imaginative costumes donned by the participant troupes draw on the history of Valletta as a harbor/fortress town, evoking the glories of the past against the decline of the present. In an increasingly suburbanized Malta, Valletta is the fashionable place to lay claim to. Nostalgia for the city offers the departed and the distantly related the chance to experience authenticity; such that for many, the performance of celebration becomes the real Valletta. The football celebration manifests a reclamation of urban space—by volume of music and singing, and by the power of transgression—in a lived jeunesse d’heure which cannot be packaged into a tourist brochure. It is ribald, drunken and holds the possibility of danger and disorder; it thereby distorts, subverts and inverts the official representations of the city, and the competing, bourgeois pageants sponsored by the state through the National Tourism Organisation. It is celebration and manifestation explicitly not targeted at the ever-present tourists. The 2001 celebrations began alongside the Valletta History and Elegance pageant, ceding the city’s central public squares to the relatively small number of pageant-goers, and congregating in the more intimate and geographically marginal areas around the lower bastions of the city. Two weeks later, the grand defilé and funeral reclaimed these central spaces, in disorderly carnivalesque and joyous celebration—a different Valletta history, without the elegance. Nostalgia for the city offers the departed and the distantly related the chance to experience authenticity; such that for many, the performance of celebration becomes the real Valletta 203 City & Society Notes Acknowledgements. The authors are indebted to the students of the University of Malta’s Anthropology of Football module, which ran between 1999 and 2003. Special thanks are due to Dr Paul Clough, the Course Convener and to Victoria Galea for assistance in the ethnographic process. Thanks are also due to Tom Carter for his invitation to contribute to this special edition; to Petra Kuppinger for her editorial advice; and to two insightful anonymous reviewers. 1For a discussion of the politics of social space and respectability in Malta, see Mitchell 1998; and 2002a: chapter 5. 2 A third, St Augustine’s parish, was added in 1968. 3 The Maltese Lira (Lm) is the Maltese currency. At the time of writing Lm 1 was equivalent of $ 2.90. 4 Only a few days earlier the Birkirkara FC vice-president admitted publicly that they had withdrawn from the market their new CD which contained a reference to this slur on birth. The president’s acknowledgement that this particular chorus was “insensitive” demanded the offending phrase be removed. 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