Largest Wave of Protests in the Country / Spanish Newspaper Reports on Citizens’ Revolt: Albanians Demand Rama’s Resignation, Prime Minister “Turns a Deaf Ear” to EU Warnings

The Spanish newspaper “El Correo” has devoted an article to the protest against Prime Minister Edi Rama, which has now been ongoing for 58 days. Albanians are unanimously demanding the prime minister’s departure.

“The spark of anger, which has turned into daily demonstrations on the streets of the capital, Tirana, erupted several months ago, although the origins of the operation date back to 2024,” El Correo writes.

The article follows:

Edi Rama can boast that he has catapulted Albania’s economy through tourism during his time as prime minister. In 2013, when he came to power, around 3 million travelers arrived. In 2025, there were more than 12 million, four times as many. But the Socialist leader wants more and now aims to position the Balkan nation—which is promoted as the European Caribbean and owes part of its appeal to its affordable prices—as a luxury destination.

But that ambition has backfired since the Trump family’s interest in pursuing it through two multimillion-euro tourism projects became known. Their plans have triggered the largest wave of protests in the country since the fall of communism in the early 1990s and directly threaten Rama’s leadership. He refuses to take “a step back,” even over Albania’s membership in the European Union.

The spark of anger, which has turned into daily demonstrations on the streets of the capital, Tirana, erupted several months ago, although the origins of the operation date back to 2024.

That year, Rama’s government granted special investor status to the firm behind the controversial real estate initiative: Affinity Partners, the investment fund linked to Jared Kushner, Trump’s “first son-in-law”—through his daughter Ivanka—who conceived the Gaza of the future, filled with skyscrapers overlooking the sea.

The businessman had placed two tourism projects on the Albanian prime minister’s desk.

One is a resort on the island of Sazan, a former communist military base that is now uninhabited, at a cost of around 1.400 billion euros.

The other is valued at 4.000 billion euros and would be built in the protected Vjosa-Narta wetlands, near Zvërnec, which are owned by the Qatari brothers—and Kushner’s partners—Ramez and Mohamad al-Khayyat.

Albania’s Anti-Corruption Prosecution Office is already investigating how the transfer of the property titles for that picture-postcard location was carried out.

“We were on a friend’s boat (…) We swam to the island, took a walk barefoot all the way to the top, and were captivated,” Ivanka Trump, seemingly unfazed by the criticism, told an American podcaster several weeks ago, describing how they discovered the nature reserve where her husband saw a business opportunity.

Along the Balkan nation’s 450 kilometers of coastline, which remained almost untouched during the harsh Stalinist regime, Kushner has set his sights on an area of extraordinary biodiversity that provides a haven for birds such as flamingos—which gave their name to the movement opposing the tourism plan: the “flamingo revolution.”

Failed Attempt in Serbia

Nevertheless, the prime minister has become the leading defender of the luxury megaproject, which he calls a “blessing” for this country of barely 3 million inhabitants and one of Europe’s most modest economies.

“Albania is not for sale,” his compatriots retort.

That enthusiasm for the Trump family’s initiative—which recently failed in another highly contested real estate venture in Serbia—has transformed the environmental campaign against the resort—even laws protecting sensitive areas were amended to facilitate it—into open criticism of Rama, with protesters demanding that he resign and call early elections.

The 62-year-old leader, now in his fourth term, is turning a deaf ear and accuses foreign cyber activists, specifically Iran, of fueling the demonstrations against a project that is already under construction.

Nor is he heeding warnings from the European Union, which has expressed its “concern” about the resort’s environmental consequences and the potential conflict with the accession process—Tirana applied in 2009 and became an official candidate five years later—to join the European bloc.