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OP-ED

What does one bridge over a river tell us about the way Albania is governed?

Politiko 2022-12-17 11:48:46
What does one bridge over a river tell us about the way Albania is governed?

Alfred Lela

I imagine the Zog Bridge over the Mat River, in the beautiful gorge that emerges from the mountains between Lezha and Mirdita, as an aesthetic and ethical monument in the history of Albania. For example, I see it illuminated from below, giving those arches gilding that pave the way, with light and ease, for the travelers of those parts and nights. Other times I envision it as a staged museum of architectonics in Albania, a space where the Ottoman and the neoclassic collide in harmony, to be haunted by the brutalist architecture of the realist socialism of the dictatorship. Why not, on Sundays I see the wooden stalls and the many goods of the famous market of Milot (making sure though that at the end of the day the boxes and plastic bags are not thrown into the river, as is the custom in Albania). The Bridge could be used also for fairs, and so on.

The Ministry of Culture and Tourism could have joined forces for something like this with the local government. But, before this enhanced imagery, the basic thing had to be done: the preservation of the bridge. One step towards that would have been to 'inventory' the damage and the resilience of the structure, and then the restoration and conservation of the surrounding habitat, ie the river bed. In the entire surrounding area, the bites from the companies that extract materials from the river, make the river bed look like a crater after bombings.

This triumph of private interest, with the disregard of the state and society, for the public good, makes the bridge a tall and long monument of an Albania that builds the future by destroying the past. Make no bets against this axiom: the future without the past does not exist, it is only spiritual schizophrenia that seeks distance where there can be nothing but conception.

The bridge as a monument, and the monuments of the past as a bridge that throw us to the future, are clearly abhorred by the Rama government. The latter, the abomination, PM has shown publicly for all the artifacts left in the architectural and cultural landscape of Albania, from the time of King Zog. The National Theatre, villas in the central and aristocratic neighborhoods of Tirana, Skënderbej square, and so on. Remember that the bridge over the Mat river also dates back to the King's time and is called, as if for a challenge, "the Zog Bridge".

The exact opposite has happened with the stations of communism in the urban or architectural space of Albania. The "House of Leaves" has been repurposed as a museum, and Enver's bunkers in Dajt and Boulevard have been named "BunkArt". The dictator's pyramid or 'mausoleum' is undergoing what Veliaj calls "revival".

Psychologically, apparently, Edi Rama seeks to serve the great rupture that Enver Hoxha introduced in the history of Albania, cutting ties with the Zog period, and starting his own era, both in politics and in urbanization. Rama, it seems, is doing the same.

Here, of course, the Albanian right, both the traditional and the new, has its own faults. They have done little or nothing to stop the rupture and revive the signs of non-communism in the architectural and urban landscape. In any case, this is not permission for the leftist government to consider Albania's history as 'winners and losers, but as a community where we all fall and rise, in bad and good times.

In the end, in order not to take this reflection as another anathema against the government, remember how many millions of euros have been thrown around for the so-called Urban Renaissance. A lot. If it is not malice, it is amateurism. With minimal care and investment, removed even from the UR fat fund, the Zog Bridge would not be today a sleazy symbol of a government seeking to become a regime. Because, history teaches us that before political oppression, regimes start from aesthetic and cultural imposition.

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