Two days ago, 800 days after the demolition of the National Theater, the Municipal Council of Tirana decided to open the competition for the construction of the new theater. The mayor of Tirana began his 17-minute speech by listing a number of elements of the much-debated new theater project, from the method of demolition, delays and the promise of the theater's completion.
Citizens Channel has been reporting since 2018 on the issue of the National Theater and will confront Veliaj's arguments with some facts, documents, and evidence of the events that marked the issue.
"The theater needs more money because of the war in Ukraine"
Veliaj: "None of us expected that on February 24, Russia's war or aggression against Ukraine would bring a total upheaval in the markets, especially in the prices of iron and steel, that is, in metal in general and concrete prices. And mainly buildings have steel, iron and concrete, cement as the basic element".
In 2018, the private company "Fusha Sh.pk" presented an unsolicited proposal that envisioned the construction of a new national theater, in exchange for multi-story towers on public land. The Albanian government accepted this proposal and started drafting a special law, which recently failed to be implemented after concerns about violations of fair competition and the Stabilization Association agreement.
In May 2020, after the violent collapse of the building, Erion Veliaj declared that "the value of the new National Theater will reach 30 million euros, the amount of which will be secured with a loan". Loan which would be taken from commercial banks.
In November of the same year, the source of the money changed again. Veliaj promised that he would build the theater with money from the state budget, asking for 36 million euros.
A year after the collapse, in May 2021, the Municipality of Tirana articulated another theory in the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, where it was said that work on the construction of the National Theater would start that summer, financed by a loan taken from the Abu Dhabi Fund.
Currently, the budget forecast of the Albanian state for the theater has a value of 4.8 billion lek, where only 900 million lek have been transferred to the Municipality of Tirana.
Veliaj announced an increase in this budget, without giving details of how much money has been added. The decision of the City Council has not been made public either on the institution's official website.
"Competition for the implementation of the project 'donated' by Fusha Sh.PK"
Veliaj: "We open an international competition for 60 days and then with the announcement of the winner we start the construction of the National Theater of Tirana with the project of Bjarke Angels, with the Danish project and we will have perhaps the most modern theater in the Balkans".
It took 800 days, a series of missed deadlines and broken promises to open the competition for the construction of the new Theater.
Veliaj: "I don't believe there will be a more beautiful theater, at least as long as we are alive, like the one we designed. "
The project of the Danish architect Bjarke Ingles was not realized by the Albanian government through a fair competition. It was part of the proposal of the company "Fusha Shpk", which mysteriously donated the project to the municipality after the failure of the special law.
"Selfie with the towers in place of cultural heritage"
Veliaj: "I hope that with time, just as with time, many of the people who protested at the lake take their children to the lake today, many of those who protested at Astir go two minutes home from Astir, many of those who went and called asbestos a cultural monument and Ternitians at the new bazaar today spend a large part of the day and do their shopping, many of them who cursed the towers, today they all take selfies and their Instagram is filled with the towers and they have brought business to Tirana. It is only a matter of time for this part to join the modernization and understand that we have not destroyed a cultural monument, we have destroyed a building made of sawdust for which there was 30 years of debate".
In the first quarter of 2022, the municipality of Tirana approved 112 new construction permits, double compared to the same period a year ago. As the area of permits increases year after year, international reports raise concern for cleaning hundreds of millions of euros in the construction sector. The new buildings are concentrated in the center of the city of Tirana, interfering with the historical part of the city. According to the analysis carried out by Citizens Channel, for 45 cultural monument buildings/villas taken in the study, we have 36 orders to remove the status, leading to the demolition of 17 historical villas/buildings and replacing them with palaces.
"The theater collapsed when the opposition was in its third sleep"
Veliaj: "We had to do it at a time when the opposition leaders were snoring that if we did it with all the militants there, it would lead to a senseless confrontation, we would become the gas of the world. So it was done only when the opposition leaders were in their third sleep and that part of the activists was small enough to be managed without a big conflict. Is it something I remember with nostalgia? Not at all. One of the hardest decisions.”
04:30 in the morning of May 17, when the collapse of the National Theater building also happened, is an inappropriate time to execute decisions made by the public administration. A number of national and international mechanisms condemned the way the theater collapsed. Physical and verbal violence, policemen without identification numbers, arrests and violence against journalists followed the protests of the following days.
The resistance to the National Theater was not led by the Siparian opposition. The Alliance for the Protection of the Theater was created by a group of citizens, artists and theater lovers.
For more than two years, citizens, activists and artists resisted against each police initiative to intervene in the premises of the theater and to empty it.
For more than two years, the square in front of the National Theater turned into an arena of public, cultural and political discourse, giving opportunities to everyone who wanted to be heard.
When will the theater be built? Promise after promise...
Today, two years after the demolition, the space where the theater was located remains empty, surrounded and without the right to be used as a public property by the citizens.
In the afternoon of May 17, 2020, after the building of the National Theater collapsed, head of Tirana Municipality, Erion Veliaj contacted the citizens directly through the Facebook social network and considered the construction of a new theater a difficult but fair decision. As he showed that they are preparing to start work on the new theater.
"As we prepare to start work on the New Theater, I invite everyone to make the project on the table even better tomorrow. That theater will be for artists and citizens, for our children. Let's build it together." - said Veliaj.
On August 15, 2020, Veliaj announced the successful completion of geological probes on the theater grounds, while announcing the start of works on the 100th anniversary of Tirana, the capital.
In addition to the start of the works, he also confirmed the approved project to be implemented, of the studio Bjarke Ingels Group.
While more 29 June 2021, Veliaj announced that the National Council of the Territory approved the permit for the construction of the new Theater.
On July 5, 2021 after the news that the National Council of the Territory granted the construction permit for the new National Theatre, expressed that: "We will wait for the clarification of the permit from KKT, we will respect the procedures and I believe in 100 days we will start work on the new National Theatre. The new year will find Tirana at least with a new theater construction site".
more April 25, 2022, at the conference of the international weeks of culture, Prime Minister Rama said that the earthquake, the pandemic and now the situation in Ukraine have slowed down the implementation of a number of projects.
"We are dealing with this issue and I believe that we will find a solution and the National Theater will be built as it was designed and as we promised. But not all plans can be implemented in the stipulated time when an event that is neither foreseen nor avoided enters between you and the deadline,"- stated Prime Minister Rama.
Erisa Kryeziu has completed higher studies in Journalism and Communication and Master of Science in Public Relations at the University of Tirana. She has been a journalist and project manager at Citizens.al for five years, where she reports on social issues and human rights, especially on issues of rights at work, in education, gender equality, marginalized groups, people with disabilities such as and for environmental issues. At the same time, she works as a project coordinator with a focus on youth and media education. User of new reporting techniques such as "Mobile Journalism" and citizen engagement tools in reporting (ECR-Engage Citizens Journalism).
