09-07 Spain and Malta 1982

We were informed 90 days before the 9th International Small Business Congress was to be held in Madrid, that we had to move it to Torremolinos on the Costa del Sol. A national election had been called in Spain, and the government could not devote the necessary security forces to protect the anticipated 300 international attendees.
So we went to Madrid for sightseeing purposes before the Congress and of course the highlight is a visit to the Museo del Prado. Mary and I feel blessed to have seen three of the world’s great museums in Saint Petersburg, Paris and Madrid. We loved Spain and rented a car to visit the countryside. Lots of grapes and lots of olives. And a wonderful culture.
We were in a beautiful hotel in Torrremolinos and in the photo you can see the Mediterranean in the distance. We went out at night to a local night club and everyone worked through a huge bowl of small clams. Mary was deathly sick and I was frightened for her life for the first time in our married life.
I had collaborated for a year with a PhD student from London University who was working on a new international definition of small and medium business. She in turn asked us to use her villa in Gozo, an island that is part of Malta. In the photo you can see Mary on the verandah of her villa.
One night we watched a Shirley Temple movie dubbed in with the local language which they call Malti. It sounded like Arabic with a significant number of English, French and Italian words. The family that looked after the villa were wonderful people and spoke English and Malti. They had us over to their home, for dinner. We loved the food and the stone construction of their home. They looked like the people that worked in my father’s factory, all of whom came from southern Italy. In the photo Mary is shopping in the Gozo marketplace.
If you love history you will love Malta. It seems every power going back thousands of years had to control the natural harbour of Valletta, the capital of Malta, if they wanted to control the Mediterranean. The photo gives you a sense of the size of the harbour. Malta had been under British rule from 1800 to 1964. When we were there the British navy was abandoning the port. Today cruise ships have replaced naval vessels.
It seemed everywhere you went in Malta you saw ruins of ancient civilizations going back 5,000 years BC. Gozo was more agricultural than the main island, but the coastal roads everywhere provided breathtaking scenery.
The stories of how Italy bombed Malta and starved the population in 1940; how the British liberated the Island; and how the people rebuilt their churches, factories and homes tells you a lot about the people and their wonderful history.