The difference being that in Spain they will have to pay for the land and conform to the rules

So now the promoters of the University of Baksheesh are into the realm of veiled threats: if you continue to oppose us, we’ll just move to Spain.

Good luck with that, then, and the sooner they find their land in Spain and get out of our faces, the better.

The problem is that the Spanish government is not tripping over itself to give Hani Hasan Naji Al Salah a large stretch of public land in a conservation zone for free, nor will it consider evicting farmers so that he can move in with his bulldozers instead.

People like Hani Hasan Naji Al Salah move in where democracy is weakest and political bosses can be manipulated. It’s staring at us right in the face: Malta’s system is weaker and more exposed to corruption and abuse than Spain’s is.

That’s something to worry about. Hani Hasan Naji Al Salah wouldn’t even be able to do what he’s doing with Muscat in mainland Italy. And the only reason he doesn’t do it in Sicily is because he’ll have to contend with the real Mafia.

In the print edition of The Sunday Times, yesterday: