How to Demolish a Cultural Monument for an Oligarch
It was the early morning before the last day of the Covid lockdown, May 17, 2020. A small group of activists of the Alliance for the Protection of the Theater were huddled up in the main hall of the National Theater, trying to get some sleep. Some were outside, keeping an eye on the surroundings. Earlier that evening, dozens of people, including leaders of the opposition parties, had come to the National Theater to protect it from what was thought to be its imminent destruction, voted a few days earlier by the Municipal Council. But now all the politicians had left, circulating the rumor that the threat was over. Around thirty people, all of whom had been engaged for nearly two years with the longest sustained protest in Albanian history, as well as a handful of journalists, remained.
Around 4:30, dozens of special forces made their way into the building, taking those inside by surprise. People fled throughout the building under the cover of darkness, trying to hide from the masked and armed intruders. But excavators swiftly followed in their wake, and started to demolish the façade while several people were still hidden in the attic. They feared for their lives as the historical building was collapsing around them. They were only found much later, alive. By noon, the National Theater was no more and with it, most of the historical archives, props, and customes that had been sheltered inside of it. The National Ombudsman later concluded that the police had used excessive violence and had endangered the lives of the protestors.
The National Theater opened in 1938 and was located directly behind the Ministry of Interior Affairs, right in the middle of Tirana. A historical landmark commissioned by King Zog and designed and built by Italian artisans, it also happened to be situated on one of the most coveted pieces of real estate in the city. This is a story of the Albanian government’s campaign to destroy this cultural monument, crush the cultural workers and their allies protecting it, and hand it over the area to a government-allied oligarch for private development.
On March 12, 2018, Prime Minister Edi Rama presented a redevelopment plan for the entire area around the National Theater, which would be redesigned by the renowned Danish architect Bjarke Ingels. He argued that the current building could not be salvaged by restoration, and that the entire project would be handed out as a concession to a construction company by means of a “special law” that would circumvent the usual expropriation and tender procedures. As it turned out later, this project had come to the government as an “unsolicited proposal” from the unnamed company, which owned “93% of the property that is adjacent to state property.” As the government had no “public fund available” for redevelopment, a direct concession without procurement procedure was claimed to be the only available option.
Whereas the plot and building of the National Theater were under management of the Ministry of Culture, some adjacent plots and buildings belonged to the Municipality of Tirana. At that time, Rama’s Socialist Party didn’t command a secure majority in the Municipal Council, due to irregularities around the swearing in of several new council members. The special law would allow the national government to circumvent the local government, joining up both pieces of real estate together for the developent of a new theater building and, importantly, a “retail connection” occupying more than half of the public property: several new highrise buildings.
When the draft law was made public, it became clear that it was designed to donate the public property of the National Theater directly to a particular construction company, Fusha, which had a long collaboration history with Prime Minister Rama, dating back to his time as mayor of Tirana in the early 2000s. Most recently, they were involved in prestige projects such as the multi-million euro renovation of Skënderbeg Square and the renovation of the Pyramid, both along the monumental axis of Tirana.1 According to draft law, the Municipality of Tirana would be expropriated and negotiations for public–private redevelopment of the land were to be held directly, without tender competition, with Fusha. Fusha in turn would commit to hiring Bjarke Ingels as designer.
The draft law “Concerning the determination of the special procedure for the negotiation and signing the contract for ‘the design and realization of the urban project of the new building of the National Theater’” was approved by Parliament on July 5, 2018 through an expedited procedure, despite being at odds with both national and international legal frameworks. With the Constitutional Court without quorum because of the vetting that was part of the ongoing Justice Reform, the law could not be immediately tested on its constitutionality.
In all of this, Ingels played an unsavory role. It was through his company’s website and an interview in a Spanish magazine that it was confirmed that it had been Fusha who had initially commissioned the design for the National Theater and several highrises behind it that Rama had presented in March 2018. In turn, Ingels claimed that he had won an “international competition.” Yet the Ministry of Culture, which owned the National Theater building, denied the existence of any competition or development plan. When asked about any details, Ingels referred to a non-disclosure agreement with his client, Fusha. And when held to account in his own country, Ingels, whose company publicly made a non-corruption pledge, complained loudly about being “accused of triggering ‘violence and corruption’,” a correct qualification based on the events that would transpire.
After four opposition deputies sent a letter to the European Commission, the internationals were forced to start paying attention. Creating ad-hoc legislation in order to favor a specific construction company without any form of competition is in violation of the Stabilisation and Association Agreement that had been signed between the European Union and Albania as part of the EU accession process, and the European Commission formally asked the government for an explanation of the special law. Meanwhile, then President Ilir Meta refused to sign the special law, citing unconstitutionality. He sent it back to Parliament, which indefinitely postponed the discussion of his veto.
In September 2018, the European Commission requested that the explicit mention of Fusha be removed from the law, while it refused to make its report on the special law public. According to the European Commission, releasing the actual report would “compromise the immense efforts achieved to establish quality international relations with Albania” and “might lead to a diplomatic incident.” The government complied, but, as before, it used the institutional vacuum at the Constitutional Court to push through the amended special law, passing it in late October. President Meta subsequently appealed the law at the non-functional Constitutional Court, while the government eventually opened, in violation of the deadlines specified in the special law, a tender for the concession of the redevelopment of the National Theater tailored precisely to Fusha in July 2019.
In response to the threat of expropriation and demolition, the actors of the National Theater and their allies started to organize. The National Theater was occupied by the Alliance for the Protection of the Theater and became a symbol of opposition against the Rama government, bringing together cultural workers, civil society activists, and opposition members in a varied and sometimes tense alliance, right in the middle of Albania’s political heart. From June 2018 until that early morning of May 17, 2020, a collectively curated program of exhibitions, speeches, theater, and music turned the occupied National Theater into a cultural space, hosting the longest show of continuous resistance and solidarity against the government Albania had ever seen.
In particular, the Alliance for the Protection of the Theater spearheaded the grassroots aid collection and distribution in the wake of the severe earthquake that hit central Albania on November 26, 2019, channeling aid to many Tirana citizens while the government was slow to respond. Their activism managed to bring the plight of the National Theater to a wider international audience, and their efforts were rewarded when in 2020 the building was listed by Europa Nostra, an EU-funded initiative, as one of the seven most endangered heritage sites in Europe. Also the then EU Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth, Mariya Gabriel, publicly supported the preservation of the building.
After staying quiet for months, refusing to announce the outcome of the tender procedure that had started in July of the previous year, the Municipality of Tirana announced in February 2020 that the negotiations had failed, due to what Shkëlqim Fusha qualified as the government’s “expanded requirements that upset my economic balance.” The National Theater would now be fully redeveloped with public funds instead. With neither tender nor redevelopment plan in place, on May 14, the Municipal Council voted in secret to demolish the National Theater.
“There are no towers there. There will be no towers built there. Inside, outside, behind the entire perimeter […] there are no towers!”
– Prime Minister Edi Rama, May 21, 2020.
In July 2020, the Municipality of Tirana opened a new tender for the design of the National Theater, priced at €500,000, which was won by A&E Engineering. Despite earlier claims that it had no money for redevelopment, which had been used to justify the concession structure of the special law, the Rama government now transferred €7.3 million to the municipality for the project, even though Mayor Veliaj had previously claimed that the whole project would cost as much as €36 million.
Meanwhile, the Constitutional Court had once again reached its quorum after being decimated by the vetting. On July 2, it reached a verdict on the President’s case against the special law. The Constitutional Court ruled that the special law should be withdrawn, which in practice had already happened. Furthermore, the transfer of the National Theater property from the Ministry of Culture to the Municipality of Tirana was judged illegal, because the Theater had a protected status as monument. But by the end of the month, the government had retransferred the property to the municipality. Mayor Veliaj argued that because the monumental building no longer existed, this new transfer did not violate the Constitutional Court’s verdict.
On May 5, 2023, the Municipal Council of Tirana decided to grant Fusha the property of 1,266 sq.m. adjacent to the National Theater, in exchange of 50% of the floor space in any future buildings, exactly as Shkëlqim Fusha had suggested already in 2020. In March 2024, it was revealed that Fusha will use the property to build a 23-story highrise, despite repeated assurances of Prima Minister Rama and Mayor Veliaj.
This sequence of events illustrates how the government effectively used the institutional vacuum caused by the Justice Reform to illegally transfer state property and a cultural monument, and then presenting the nation with a simple fait accompli of its demolition when the Constitutional Court was reconstituted. It also shows how a construction company with close ties to the government tried, and succeeded, to acquire public property to realize commercial highrises: first through an unsolicited concession proposal, then through (failed) tender negotiations with the Tirana municipality, and finally by being granted the property for free of charge. All of this was given a veneer of respectibility by an internationally renowned architect, whose plans miraculously survived this dazzling series political and business maneuvers.
The Albanian Mechanism is part of Manifesto GREAT WAVE.
As a sidenote, Petrit Fusha, a cousin of Fusha’s owner Shkëlqim Fusha, had as prosecutor been in charge of the bungled investigation into the 2016 death of Ardit Gjoklaj on the Sharra Landfill, allowing Mayor of Tirana Erion Veliaj as well as a regional leader of the Socialist Party to avoid accountability. Granting Fusha the extralegal concession of the National Theater should be understood within this context. In order to avoid the vetting, Petrit Fusha resigned in 2019. He was indicted in 2022 for hiding assets, allegedly related to his brother’s activities as drug trafficker. This is just one of the many miniatures in which construction companies, drug money, the Albanian government, and its justice system are all linked together through family and clientelist ties.