Analysis for an Italian magazine: “The Albanian Files” proves that Rama is “The Godfather” with full control over Albania

The prime minister, who has long been the subject of debate, is changing Albania step by step, putting up developments with the help of a series of well-known foreign architects, without a single Albanian among them, and relying on a highly favorable legal framework. This picture is clearly reflected in the book “The Albanian Files.”

While Albania’s squares have been painted pink and, for more than a month, have been boiling with an unexpected but unstoppable protest — a collective mobilization without precedent in the last thirty years — inside the institutions a completely different narrative has emerged, built on self-congratulation.

This contrast came into focus on June 3 in Tirana, during the opening of the second edition of the “Bread and Heart” architecture festival, where the book “The Albanian Files” (Lars Müller Publishers, edited by Anneke Abhelakh) was also presented. The 800-page volume, featuring 523 architectural projects and sixty international studios, lays out the figures behind an extraordinary transformation. Millions of square meters are rewriting Albanian territory from north to south. Yet this major publication shows only part of the reality: the interventions not documented are far more numerous than those included in the book, making the territorial transformation even broader.

In a recent interview with the Financial Times, Edi Rama angrily dismissed accusations that he is “The Godfather” who controls the country absolutely, asking anyone to bring him proof. Yet that proof appears to lie precisely in the pages of “The Albanian Files.”

A book that at first glance is devoted to architecture ultimately becomes the manifesto of a political model, in which the prime minister is presented as the chief driver of Albania’s urban transformation.

History shows that architecture has always been one of power’s preferred tools. Cities are not merely physical spaces: they shape the identity and culture of a people. The Albanian case revives this idea in a new form, turning the entire country into a testing ground entrusted to the world’s best-known architects.

Editor Anneke Abhelakh herself acknowledges in the introduction that, in the Albanian context, it is impossible “to separate architecture from power.” Referring to Deyan Sudjic’s “The Edifice Complex,” she recalls that buildings serve to impress, to embody the ambition of those who govern, and that the decisions reshaping the country are being driven “clearly by opportunism.”

Many starchitects, no competition

Architecture is serving not only as a tool to transform the city, but also as a kind of calling card. The big names of contemporary architecture are being used to build the image of a modern, open and dynamic Albania, while at the same time the clash over how this transformation is being carried out is deepening.

From the designers’ own accounts, “The Albanian Files” makes the link between political power and architecture clear. Many of them say they did not arrive in Albania through public competitions, calls or transparent procedures, but thanks to personal contacts with the prime minister.

Some recount receiving a message on Instagram directly from Rama and then winning a contract for a public work worth four million euros; others recall a personal phone call from “Edi” after simply exchanging contacts; even a Pritzker Prize winner describes the same method of operation.

Urban planning thus appears to move away from democratic logic and onto private ground, replacing administrative transparency with personal relationships.

Also significant is the letter that a partner at OMA sent to the prime minister. In it, he thanked him for the especially favorable conditions offered to international architects and went so far as to provocatively express the wish that the next elections be canceled and a lifelong presidency established. Rama later downplayed the significance of the text, calling it merely a satirical provocation. But against the broader backdrop of the book, the episode takes on a disturbing tone.

The most visible consequence of this “international” model is the almost complete exclusion of Albanian architects. Among the 523 projects collected in the book, not a single local author appears.

In the foreword, Rama calls Albania “the largest open-air school of architecture,” arguing that young Albanian professionals can learn by working alongside major foreign studios. But in architecture, learning cannot replace authorship.

Restricting an entire generation to the role of collaborators to starchitects means depriving the country of the chance to develop its own design culture. The concrete risk is that the territory will become an atlas of “invisible cities” and urban stage sets built on abstract images, empty forms and polished aesthetic signs, artificially imposed on the Albanian context.

“The Albanian Files” highlights a clear geography of investment, an expansion focused almost entirely on mixed-use towers, luxury residential complexes and tourist resorts, while interventions dedicated to public spaces and social infrastructure remain secondary.

While the catalogue celebrates exclusive housing complexes and new urban skylines, Albania continues to face a chronic lack of social housing programs, inadequate infrastructure and basic services that in many areas of the country remain inaccessible.

Neighborhoods without minimum urban planning standards, territories cut off by weak road links, and homes without basic services coexist with the rise of new “pearls” aimed at the luxury real estate market.

It is hard to say that this is the priority of a country still grappling with deep infrastructural weaknesses.

Often, even the identity of the clients is not mentioned by the architecture studios, adding to doubts about the source of the capital and the transparency of these real estate operations.

From protected natural areas to building plots

What also makes this change possible is a profound revision of the legal framework.

The new Protected Areas Law (Law No. 21/2024), which is now being challenged by popular protests, gives the Council of Ministers the right to authorize tourist developments inside national parks and coastal areas that previously enjoyed protection.

This is compounded by Law No. 55/2015 on Strategic Investments, which provides for accelerated procedures, significantly shortens approval deadlines and even allows expropriations in the public interest in favor of private entities.

Thanks to these legal changes, areas such as the Narta lagoon or the territory of Zvërnec can lose their protected status and be offered as construction land to major international capital.

The most controversial case is the multibillion mega-project promoted by Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, who aim to build luxury resorts and thousands of housing units precisely along these fragile ecosystems.

It is no coincidence that the symbol of the large popular protest has become the flamingo, the protected bird that lives in the lagoon and today represents resistance to the advance of construction speculation.

The same logic appears everywhere: real estate development consistently prevails over the protection of landscape, biodiversity and the common interest.

The problem, in truth, does not lie in the quality of the individual buildings. Many of the projects included in this volume were designed by some of the best studios in the world and, taken individually, may have unquestionable architectural value.

But a city is not simply the sum of a few iconic buildings.

Urban planning is a dialogue between landscape, services, public spaces, the environment and shared needs.

When that balance is broken, even the best architecture becomes part of the problem.

The famous slogan “less is more” in Albania is being distorted into “more is more,” risking that the architectural excellence invoked by the prime minister will remain only an elegant covering behind which deep territorial inequalities are hidden.

A new energy

It is precisely against this backdrop that the protest of recent weeks should be read, a mobilization in which Albania’s squares are opposing not only individual skyscrapers or the threat to the ecosystems of the Narta lagoon, but also demanding the democratic right to take part in the decisions that change the country, rather than merely experiencing them passively.

This revolt expresses a much broader dissatisfaction: although Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew by an average of 3.1% a year from 2013 to 2024 thanks to construction and tourism, inequalities have deepened significantly since the 2010s.

Wealth remains concentrated in the hands of a few people, while citizens face frozen average wages between 700 and 800 euros, with more than one fifth of workers earning a minimum wage of just 390 euros.

This economic inequality, combined with the widespread perception of corruption and shortcomings in the healthcare and justice systems, has reduced trust in public institutions to just 11.6% (less than half the Balkan average) and fueled a dramatic exodus, during which 700,000 people have left over the past fifteen years, while 74% of young people under 30 still say they want to emigrate.

Faced with this widespread discontent, the prime minister tends to explain every criticism as outside influence, revealing a political class increasingly incapable of confronting its own contradictions.

On July 4, Edi Rama’s birthday, while architects from around the world were celebrating the figure of the prime minister, the squares continued to fill with people demanding his resignation.

This mobilization carries a deep paradox: the man now being challenged over his political model is the same one who, at the start of his public engagement in the 1990s, emerged in public life as an avant-garde artist, an anti-system intellectual and a culture minister who promised the democratization of collective space in the face of the legacy of authoritarianism.

After three decades, that project of urban liberation appears to have turned into its opposite.

That is why this revolt is not only political.

It is the spontaneous protest of a new generation that feels betrayed and is tired of a government that no longer thinks about the well-being of its citizens.

It is a mobilization led by young people who want to start everything from scratch and are demanding the resignation of the entire political class, taking to the streets to denounce systemic corruption, the unlimited power of oligarchs and the intervention of investors who place private profits above the national interest.

It is the outright refusal to be crushed by thirty years of over-centralized rhetoric; it is the awakening of a collective consciousness that opposes silence and no longer accepts that its land be treated as a bargaining chip.

When I reach the end of “The Albanian Files,” I am left suspended in a kind of limbo, between curiosity about the change and concern over what Albania risks becoming.

I look at these pages and ask myself whether the country I left thirty years ago is still the same one I see today; whether it still belongs to me or has now become the property of others.

It is a heavy, almost painful feeling when you watch the metamorphosis of your country of origin and realize, day after day, that you have been left completely outside its development.

It is the deep disappointment of witnessing an epochal change that seems not to take our presence into account.

And yet the younger generations who for more than a month have been filling the squares show that Albania is finally waking up.

It is a new, aware and courageous energy, demanding its place in the future.

It is precisely from here, from this reawakened collective consciousness, that Albania must begin again.

From here comes the hope that we can start over and, together, design our cities.