The Labour Party’s headquarters rises out of Mile End road like a brutalist titan’s sore thumb.
It does not attempt to smooth out its rough edges. One rectangle unapologetically follows the other. Much like the country that its present tenants currently run, the building’s facade is all that remains of its vibrant artistic history.
The Labour Party’s desire to occupy this building was in lockstep with the zeitgeist of the nineties: a drive to modernise, to evolve past the party’s historic roots as a hotbed for militant trade unionism.
Moving the party’s headquarters from Cottonera to Ħamrun went above and beyond the logistical benefit of being located in a more central area.
Considering the fact that their headquarters are just a few hundred metres away from each other, the change of location was also a physical manifestation of the irascible rivalry between the two major parties that have been carving up the island between them for over a century.
The only deviation from the building’s unrelenting edges comes in the form of an awkward archway on the balcony. It is the only notable modification to the facade of the building since it was first demolished and rebuilt by the Labour Party.
Keen to cement his standing as the greatest megalomaniac to ever run for office, disgraced former prime minister Joseph Muscat wanted the balcony so he could salute the faithful when the party’s inevitable electoral rebound finally happened.
Perhaps it is fitting that such a physical piece of theatre would take place in a building that once served as a centre for the arts rather than the headquarters of a criminal organisation.
Since 2013, this balcony has been the pulpit from which Muscat and his successor, prime minister Robert Abela, got to celebrate the party’s winning streak.
It will be a very lonely day beneath that awkward archway for whoever crashes and burns at the bottom of the party’s downward spiral.
The Nationalist Party’s vainglorious rhetoric echoes through the grandiose, heavy colours of these doors. Morning light looks upon those brown and off white hues with kindness.
In the colder twilight of the evening, however, Dar Ċentrali – or l-Istamperija, as it used to be known – is more of an expensive reminder of the party’s permanent hangover than it is anything else.
While the Labour Party made a strategic choice to shift from Cottonera to Ħamrun, the Nationalist Party has had its feet firmly planted in that patch in neighbouring Pietà for the past 57 years.
Though it feels like a panopticon that’s propped up on two lonely columns, the building’s dimensions give it a distinct sense of soft elegance.
In 2002, the party began the process of demolishing its original headquarters and rebuilding anew, with works being completed by 2008.
In retrospect, it feels like a vanity project which was completed in time for the last hurrah, an attempt at reinvention too close to the expiry date.
Since then, the Nationalist Party has not been able to stand on its own two feet. It is a party that insulated itself from the outside world, slowly hemorrhaging relevance, money, and influence.
The bitter irony that the building was designed to welcome “everyone” is not lost on anyone who stops to think about it for more than five seconds.
At this rate, the party will be lucky if it doesn’t need to start pawning furniture.