The management plan for the former Spaçi prison is presented, specialists request that the museum not be on the highway  

The rehabilitation of the premises of the former prison of Spaçi will not allow their degradation, turning it into a place of memory. But the issue of the museum in the public hearing on the plan for the management of the former Spaçi prison with representatives of the Ministry of Economy, Culture and Innovation, the Italian foundation "Santagata" for the economy of Culture, which prepared the draft, and the organization "Cultural Heritage without boundaries", engineers and others brought debate. The establishment of the museum for the former prison camp, but far from it, on the highway of the Municipality of Mirdita, according to the drafters, is the main cause of the difficult infrastructural conditions and is a model applied in other countries. "We made a comparison with a large number of detention center cases around the world and none of their museums are inside the area. Many of them are in the city centers, in the big centers. Others are in small towns or in more remote areas, such as the concentration camps in Poland", said Giulia Avanza from the "Santagata" foundation. While the drafter of the project of the former prison camp, Bujar Ferra, together with others present at the public hearing, said that this removes the desire of visitors to go to Spaç afterwards. "The museum is something that is done for everyone, that is, for all the suffering of that time. I go and see with my own eyes, where I find a gourd, I find the bowl where the soup was taken, I find the spoon, I find different pictures, I find the points where the guards were sitting, it was the siege. But I have to go and see you in the gallery", he said among other things. The architect and engineer Bujar Ferra, the designer of the prison, requested the use of the archive for Spaçi to reconstruct the memory of what happened in the former prison camp. During the meeting, the designer also claimed the return to the original of this point of cultural heritage, with the appearance of shacks of sheet metal and boards, which it had in 1968 when it was opened.  

Project cost

The Ministry of Economy, Culture and Innovation previously shared for public consultation the draft plan for the management of the former Spaçi prison. According to the draft, the ownership of the cultural property - category II cultural monument - which is currently shared between several institutions, should be transferred to the Ministry of Economy, Culture and Innovation as the public institution most capable of fulfilling the expectation of active management of Spaçi. The foundation responsible for the indirect management of Spaçi will also undertake the necessary procedures for the establishment of the prison and forced labor camp museum, an autonomous specialized museum with a private legal entity dedicated to the resistance to the communist dictatorship. The museum will be built in Reps, the nearest town from Spaçi, in a space of 750 m2. The governing bodies of the foundation will be: the board of administration with representatives of the Ministry of Culture, the founding specialized institution of cultural heritage, the Municipality of Mirdita and donors or sponsors, as well as the board of honor with former political prisoners and the scientific board with representatives from memory institutions and organizations that have promoted activities around Spaç over the years. Funding of the foundation will be provided by support from the public budget, as well as from other national or international, public or private funds. According to the draft, starting from business planning, the site will not be financially profitable, while the cost of the project exceeds 4.2 million euros. The focus of the museum will be the resistance efforts and stories that took place in Spa?, from the fundamental episode of the Spa? Revolt in 1973, to the many daily acts and gestures of resistance against the loss of humanity, dignity and solidarity that was imposed on them. prisoners. The draft envisages the preservation of the buildings of the former prison in their current state, stopping their deterioration, but preserving them in such a way that the signs of the passage of time on the buildings are seen as a metaphor for a distancing from the memory of the place. The draft proposes the partial reconstruction of some of the key elements, the recreation of one of the cells, the recovery of paths and entrances to the mining tunnel, the creation of a signpost, the use of technology to display the missing parts. The implementation of the plan is expected to last 5 years.