FLASH
Shkruar nga Gabriele Ragnini 
More protests are erupting in the country over the rapper's scandals. "We had to avoid embarrassing Albania in front of nearly 25,000 foreign visitors," the prime minister wrote. But discontent is growing in Albania, both over the American's anti-Semitic stances and the unaffordable ticket prices...
On the outskirts of Tirana, towards Durrës, work is underway on a semi-temporary arena, built especially for the occasion. However, the “Eagle Stadium”, with a declared capacity of 60,000 seats, will be dismantled immediately after the single night for which it is being built.
It is precisely where Ye, known as Kanye West, will perform on July 11, arriving in Albania after being expelled from several European stages due to his anti-Semitic (and other) stances.
But just days before the event, the official ticket sales website still showed thousands of empty seats. For this reason, Edi Rama's government was forced to intervene with a controversial maneuver, using money from the state treasury: 4 million euros of state funds, allocated at the last minute, so that the concert would not fail.
"We were forced to finance 4 million euros at the last minute for Kanye West's concert, otherwise it would have been canceled," the Albanian prime minister declared in a long video published on social media.
For the international media, Rama justified this selection by linking it more to the country's image than to ticket sales: "We had to avoid embarrassing Albania in the eyes of nearly 25,000 foreign visitors from 80 countries around the world, who had already bought tickets to see Kanye West, while many others feared the cancellation of the concert," he wrote on Facebook.
400 million lek (almost four million euros) were taken from the state reserve fund through a normative act, based on Article 101 of the Constitution of Albania, which allows the government to issue decisions with the force of law in cases of need and urgency.
Rama claims that this operation will generate at least 100 million euros for the local economy, also influenced by the increase in reservations in accommodation structures for the concert dates.
In April, it was Prime Minister Rama who had announced the rapper's arrival with great fanfare. The promise was quite different: Albania would only guarantee "hospitality, security and logistics," the Prime Minister had said.
While the Minister of Culture, Blendi Gonxhja, had clarified that the event would not receive public funds, as it was financed entirely by ticket sales and organized by a private group of Albanian, German and Turkish partners. Three months later, that promise turned out to be untrue: without direct state intervention, the concert risked not happening at all.
High prices and public revolt
One of the reasons for this failure in sales is the tickets: they cost between 292 and 339 euros, a completely unaffordable figure for most of the local public, considering that the average salary in Albania is around 870 euros gross per month.
Moreover, for more than a month, Tirana and other cities have been gripped by daily anti-government protests. These protests initially began around a luxury resort project by entrepreneur Jared Kushner (son-in-law of US President Donald Trump) and then spread to other real estate projects on the coast, near protected areas, as well as to allegations of corruption against the government, which Rama denies.
"Pensioners live on 110 euros a month, hospitals lack equipment and doctors, but the government finds money at the last minute for a concert. You're kidding us," wrote an Albanian girl with 41,000 followers on social media.
Euronews Albania journalist Alice Ophelia listed in a video the priorities that, according to her, have been neglected by the government: the lack of real waste recycling, abandoned garbage along beaches and villages, street animals and the risk of infrastructure, such as the case of the rock that slid on the Tirana-Korça road, taking the life of a driver.
From the NATO summit in Ankara, where he was during the days of controversy, Rama immediately responded to the attacks, describing as "ravens" some members of the opposition, who, according to him, are "manipulating the public debate."
Kanye West's scandal years
Despite his international fame, Ye's recent history is littered with cancellations. In 2025, Australia denied him a visa due to his stance on the Jewish community and the fact that he had promoted a clothing line with the image of a swastika.
That same year, the album “Cuck,” a collaboration with Dave Blunts, opened with a verse that combined a racist slur with an open praise of Hitler. After posting anti-Semitic content on social media, Ye issued a public apology, saying he regretted the pain his words had caused and asking for forgiveness, while at times linking these episodes to his bipolar disorder.
Keir Starmer's British government then banned him from entering England, where he had been announced as the headliner of the Wireless Festival, whose participants were subsequently reviewed. The same happened with the Krakow date in Poland, which was cancelled.
Meanwhile, France suspended his shows on national territory, pending further evaluations. This list is also joined by cancellations in India, the Czech Republic and even Italy, where the mysterious HellAwaits festival in Reggio Emilia failed, for which a large number of tickets remained unsold anyway.
Despite these bans, Ye has managed to perform in Slovakia, the Netherlands and Georgia in recent months. After Tirana, his European tour is expected to conclude with dates in Madrid and the Algarve region, before the grand finale in Chicago on September 3 and 4. That is, if everything goes according to plan. / Pamphlet from “L'Espresso”
E vërteta është se levat e PS nëpër qytetet e Shqipërisë, kanë mbi 2 ditë që po ofrojnë bileta falas. Mjafton të mbushet skena????????????