You must work to leave a legacy. And you must come back and learn from your legacy to improve

David Schembri was born in Qrendi in 1952 and in 2013 he was elected as mayor of his hometown. During his first term, Qrendi received the European label of Destination of Excellence for Tangible Heritage.

In 2018, David Schembri received the “Medalja ghall Qadi tar-Repubblika” by Her Excellency Madame President Marie Louise Collerio, for “his service to the Republic”. The honour was granted in recognition of his service as a diver working for the Government of Malta Public Works Ministry.

In 2019, he was re-elected as Mayor of Qrendi for a second five-year term.

Mr Schembri, what does Qrendi have to offer potential travellers? Can you give a local point of view?

My municipality is very small with a population of 3,000 but in Malta, that is very big. It has many historical and tourist sites, our economy is mainly based on tourism and industry – textiles and electronics.

My locality has everything on a small scale. The only thing we do not have or haven’t discovered so far are Roman artefacts.

We have Neolithic temples that are world UNESCO sites. One is the Hagar Qim and Mnajdra, dated to around 3,500 BC and 2,500 BC respectively. And we have one of the best preserved Neolithic dolmen– 2,500 BC.

We have had Punics, Romans, Carthaginians, Greeks and Venetians – all coming to Malta.

Malta is in the middle of the Mediterranean, so they were using the island to supply their ships, take food and repair their ships.

We were a peace-loving people, everyone was free and welcome to come here: Greeks and Romans lived here, Arabs and Jews lived here. All these civilisations found refuge without conflict on the island.

Qrendi is also a European Destination of Excellence for Tangible Heritage since 2018. Our municipality received the award, to a large part, due to its religious heritage and Neolithic sites. 

The region became a parish in 1618 and started building our church. It was built by one of the greatest architects of the time and took 70 years to complete. It is considered the ‘cathedral of the countryside’. After that, locals started building small chapels. In fact, in Qrendi we have 6 small chapels.

Could you tell me a bit more about the local attractions?

Apart from the Neolithic sites which are considered older than the pyramids, we have a very big sinkhole in Qrendi. It is called Il-Maqluba – Maqluba means ‘turned upside down’. It appeared at a time when our locality was thriving in 1343. The land collapsed and left a big hole – 40 metres deep and 300 metres in circumference.

It happened during a three-day storm and, as people could not write at the time, they started telling stories that eventually became legends. So we have the legend that because the villagers were behaving badly, God sent a message: ‘Repent or I will punish you.’ They did not repent, so the ground swallowed them up. We say that there was a good lady, or a nun, who was in a chapel praying so she was saved.

But even the devil did not want the land, so he spat it out and this is why there is a small island – five kilometres away from the sinkhole. The Maqluba chapel, on the other hand, has been around since 1575, according to records. It is a small baroque chapel that has helped us touristically. Together with the bigger religious sites, they are known as San Mateo tal Maqluba, and these have put us on the map – both locally and internationally.

The chapels have also been restored in recent times.

As a municipality, we also celebrate Santa Maria and Our Lady of Lourdes – two very big religious festivals, where local culture is at its best, with churches decorated with gold and silver.

Our streets are all decorated with flags and banners and our area is known for its fireworks and pyrotechnical display. All throughout Our Lady of Lourdes which is in the first week of July and during the two weeks of Santa Maria our skies are lit up. In Malta, we are basically the international champions of pyrotechnics.

We can say that we are a religious hotspot. If you like religion, you can come to Qrendi and see things that you can find elsewhere but all closely knitted together.

Another thing that makes Qrendi unique is that people are very inquisitive. They want to meet you and ask who you are, where are you staying and how is your family.

In fact, as a guest, you will come to our municipality as a friend and leave as part of the family. This is something that makes me very proud.

What do you do as a local council to support and expand that tourism offer?

We have done a lot of restoration work, on the chapels themselves, and inside, with regards to books, artefacts, etc. This is basically what we are doing and thus a lot of the time we are doing small interventions but when you add them together, they become more significant.

In Qrendi we have a lot of small and unique things that they do not have in other municipalities. So by restoring these we have become a greater attraction.

Qrendi also has one of the most famous caves not only in Malta but also internationally – the Blue Grotto.

We also have three towers, built to safeguard the local people against invasions by Turkish or Mediterranean pirates. In Qrendi we also have a very nice Victorian garden, one of 13 such on the island, built by the British governor-general 230 years ago.

Our municipality is also home to Malta’s national tree, which grows in the Maqluba and also our national flower – these are all helping us to get more promotion.

As the local council, we want to use these assets to create a greater demand and attract visitors to Qrendi.

How was the tourism sector affected by the COVID-19 Pandemic? Did you fear that 2022 would bring another slump in tourism?

During the pandemic, everything slowed down. But what we have done is rethink our strategy. And also we tried to make the town as safe as possible through government aid.

This sense of public health security was needed because the Blue Grotto has 240,000 annual visitors, and the Neolithic Temples of Hagar Qim and Mnajdra have 350,000. In fact, everyone who comes to Malta will visit our temples, because they are unique. So we tried to sanitise our streets, restaurants, and places of interest. Tourism did slow down but now that the pandemic is over – things are picking up again.

We have created a niche for everyone – if you want to come as a lazy tourist with an organised group and tourist bus – we have that service. If you want to come by yourself, with your significant other at your own leisure, we have created a support structure for that. If you are interested in history – we have that as well; nature - our locality provides it. And if you want to just come and sit down and talk and walk and go back and eat – we can cater to those needs. It is just a matter of figuring out your priorities.

Tourists are here, back to near pre-Covid figures and we are getting even more. Our government is also trying to create other niches. Before Malta was known for its seas and sand, now we are promoting monthly activities, fireworks, carnivals, religious festivals and jazz festivals. Every month in Malta there is a different activity.

Do you feel that that would be enough to keep Qrendi on the map?

Every effort, no matter how big or small can help to promote our municipality better. I am happy to be associated with TheMayor.EU, because people can learn from my best practices but I also learn from their best practices, other municipalities, who are seeing challenges like Qrendi and turning them into opportunities.

It is not easy but if you sit down and figure out how other municipalities do it, with logistics and finance to achieve something, why shouldn’t you? And if we are able to overcome a challenge, as a small municipality with limited resources, other people can do it too. If there is a will, there is always a way.

When it comes to developing tourism, first of all, we cater for them. We have good roads and good parking. Both the Maltese and the tourists are oftentimes less active, especially in the hot summer months, so we have good networking, good restaurants, good bars and also public buses that you can travel on with minimal costs.

Things are not done by the mayor here, they are not done by the municipality - they are done through the synergy of each and every stakeholder in order to achieve more.

Sometimes, to tell you, this also represents our shortcomings because here they think that if the mayor dies, the village will collapse – that is inefficient thinking. So, you must work to leave a legacy. And you must come back and learn from your legacy to improve.

Author: Denis Balgaranov

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