Thursday, June 07, 2007

'Sette Giugno' - 7th June 1919




A little bit of history today........ 7th June known as Sette Giugno, this is in remembrance of the riots of 1919 when the Maltese population revolted against the British government to obtain some form of representative government. Four people died when fire was opened on the protesters. One of the four men was Giuseppe Bajada who hailed from Xaghra-Gozo. He happened to be in Malta on that fateful day when he went to obtain a passport to emigrate. He found himself amongst the rioting crowd and according to Giuse Orlando, quoted by Herbert Ganado, the the ensuing melee he was hit while in 'Strada Teatro' and fell down holding the Maltese flag. To remember the tragic events and the death of Guiseppe Bajada and the others The 7th June of every year is a Public holiday.

Just a note to you all Birzebbuga is in the southern part of the island on the left side of where Marsaxlokk is.

14 comments:

Alifan said...

Hi Dina, when we were living in Malta in 1958 there were riots and us English were called many names by a few, but after all the Maltese have been through in their history we were not surprised, and we had wonderful Maltese neighbours, who looked after us....

Hope you pop over and see the latest cake on my blog.......

Bergson said...

thank you for this course for history

instructive

Fabrizio Zanelli said...

Do you know reason because you call this event with the italian translation of the date? Maybe because it was a revolt against British Governement so they didn't want to call it in English?

~tanty~ said...

Oh wow, what a story.
Have a nice day Dina.

Peter said...

Maltese language is I guess and mixture of Arabic and Italian. I suppose most of you talk both English and Maltese today?

1919! Then it took another 40-50 years before you reached independence!

Olivier said...

merci pour ce cour d'histoire, j'avoue que je n'avais pas beaucoup de connaissance sur Malte. grace au DP on peut decouvrir, c'est tres bien.
Donc une bonne fete du 7th Juin


thank you for this court for history, I acknowledge that I did not have much knowledge on Malta. thanks to the DP one can discover, it is very well. Thus a happy spend of the 7th June

inspired said...

This is very interesting history..
the map is a nice touch ..

Lori said...

Thanks for giving us this history about Malta. We can learn so much from visiting the blogs all around the world!

Ash said...

Thanks for sharing this, Dina.

Anonymous said...

Well good for your public holiday today. I enjoyed the narrative and learned something. Thanks for the post.

Abraham Lincoln
Remember "The World's Ugliest Cat?" He got a haircut!
Brookville Daily Photo

GMG said...

Hi Dina,
I learned some of the history of Malta when I visited your country in May 1999 (eight years ago, already). But my interest was mostly on the eighteenth century and on two gentlemen who were also named Manuel (the older version was written Manoel...). So this post was very instructive on this early 20th century episode!
Today is also a public holiday in Portugal, but that is due to the fact that it's Corpus Christi Day (a moveable Christian feast, celebrated on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday)...
Enjoy your holiday!
Gil

Dina said...

thanks all for visiting,

gmg- Sunday here in Malta will do Corpus too, it's the same as in portugal too I assume.

M.Benaut said...

I also am grateful to learn of this part of your history. I also did not realize that arabic was spoken here, but there must be many from north africa on your island.
The world is definitely becoming smaller, now that we can travel so far, so quickly.

Anonymous said...

interesting point that its spelt in italian and not in maltese even after such a long time even more surprising that hte italians where the very first peaple to attack malta even though they considered it to belong to them.glad that we sometimes learn from history