REPUBLISHED

A parallel with Serbia: can the public square still put pressure on those in power?

Erblin Vukaj · Originally published: 6 November 2025

Since November 2024, Serbia has been the scene of mass protests. Students, citizens, workers and civil society activists have filled the streets to demand accountability, transparency and justice.

An engineering disaster, the collapse of the roof of a railway station in Novi Sad that left 15 dead, acted as a catalyst for a revolt that spread to dozens of cities, including Belgrade.

In Albania, meanwhile, similar protests seem to fade without crystallising into sustained movements. Despite the various situations and events that have stirred revolts over the past decade, there has been no spark capable of igniting protests or keeping them alive for long.

Some blame the strength of government power; others the opposition’s stagnation and the lack of inspiring alternatives.

History shows that Albania’s political system changed after thousands of citizens filled central Tirana and toppled the statue of dictator Hoxha on 20 February 1991. Today, however, some 35 years later, the centre preserves no memory of that event and rarely serves as a venue for political demonstrations.

At first glance, it seems that squares are no longer spaces of protest and resistance, as they are in neighbouring countries.

The square as a controlled stage set

Skanderbeg Square today resembles a great paved mound, its slopes making it difficult to organise events, let alone protests.

Events generally occupy the edges of the square, where scaffolding and other equipment are not at risk of toppling. Even for those in power, election rallies in the centre have failed to retain their former spectacle.

Architect and activist Migen Qiraxhi tells Citizens.al that this kind of urban transformation is not “innocent”. In his view, the approach to development over the past decade has generally given public spaces a role as scenery rather than as vital places for citizens.

“Squares are now there to be photographed, not lived in. They are used for controlled events, not for debate and civic participation,” says Qiraxhi, who works as a project coordinator at the organisation “Qëndresa Qytetare”.

He calls this process “an architecture of civic discouragement”. The larger and more spectacular the square, the harder it is to feel the scale of a protest.

“The 2018 student protest looked massive on Kavaja Street and gave people motivation; yet the very same protest became demotivating when it moved to the square and the boulevard, because the proportions between the crowd and the space were reversed,” Qiraxhi recalls.

“On the other hand, Skanderbeg Square is not even lit in a way that would allow it to serve as an agora for citizens after daylight hours,” he adds.

According to Qiraxhi, those in power in Tirana have also learned to take on the role of the protesting citizen. He recalls how, in an effort to discourage the student protests of December 2018, Prime Minister Rama organised meetings with students and presented himself with the line “I’m a student too, when are we going to talk?!”

Qiraxhi saw the same approach in the 2013 protest against the plan to dismantle the chemical weapons of Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian regime in Albania.

“Just as Vučić does in Belgrade, he tries to appropriate citizens’ demands. It is a tactic to neutralise confrontation,” he argues.

Protests have moved to social media

Faced with this approach to urban and social development, in which economic and everyday pressures have pushed people towards greater individualism, popular revolt has largely found expression in digital spaces.

For Ivan Blažević, a programme manager at the “European Fund for the Balkans”, this shift from the square to social media is part of a broader transformation.

“It is not a weakening, but a transformation in the way civic energy is expressed. Social media have opened up new spaces for organising and solidarity, particularly for young people and marginalised groups,” he tells Citizens.al.

He nevertheless warns of the risk of fragmentation, as digital engagement is more immediate but also more fragile.

“Digital space extends the reach of protest, but loses the shared physical experience that gives movements their strength,” Blažević stresses.

In his view, online protests cannot convey the shared moment of opposition. The challenge is therefore to connect the two forms of engagement so that digital mobilisation translates into real civic participation with tangible political effects.

Beyond these aspects, however, Blažević sees another troubling dimension: the normalisation of authoritarianism through the loss of public space as a political symbol.

“When squares become sterile, controlled or commercialised, citizens lose the inclination to participate, debate and hold those in power accountable. This erodes the essence of democracy,” Blažević says.

From the collective to the individual

In Albania, the absence of an ecosystem for civic organising, weak universities, non-existent trade unions and limited space for the media have meant that protest is seen more as an eruption of revolt than a process of civic engagement.

“When citizens perceive the political system as corrupt or unresponsive, protests become expressions of frustration rather than strategic tools for change,” Blažević comments.

Qiraxhi, who has organised and taken part in several civic protests with “Qëndresa Qytetare”, defines this as “revolt in the absence of institutions”. He says that, under these conditions, social media have become the only refuge for public expression, but with no real prospect of translating it into political action.

In Serbia, by contrast, the protests of 2024-2025 physically brought citizens back onto the streets and into city centres, a symbolic and meaningful development in opposition and resistance to authority and abuses of power.

In Albania, meanwhile, citizens seem no different from tourists, who, as visitors, photograph the streets and squares but do not take ownership of them or use them politically.

Thus, if the public square is a mirror of a democratic society, what is missing in Tirana is not only the place and physical access to it, but also citizens’ very relationship with the system, those in power and one another.

“The loss of the square is the loss of democratic memory. Reclaiming it is essential to keeping democratic life itself alive in the Balkans,” Blažević stresses.