In addition to entertainment, spectacles also produce powerful symbolism. It is interesting to note that symbolic effects often dominate political, economic, and even police ones. Symbolism remains one of the most powerful forms of power.

When Kanye West arrived in Tirana, he brought with him something that is not easily bought: his symbolic capital. This capital had been built over decades through music, fame, controversy, cultural influence, and the ability to attract global attention. The audience did not go to the concert just to hear his songs; they could hear them anywhere. People went to the concert to be present at a spectacle that bore the stamp of a global figure.

At the last minute, Edi Rama's government decided to finance the concert with around four million euros. But what did the government pay for? Did it pay so that the concert would not fail, as was said? To preserve Albania's honor, as Rama emphasized? For the unsold tickets?

Or did she buy her "ticket" to become part of the symbolism of the spectacle?

At first glance, the answer seems simple: any government can finance a concert. But a deeper analysis suggests something else. A government doesn't just finance the stage, the lighting, or the organization. It also invests in the symbolism that the spectacle produces.

In this sense, last-minute funding can be read as an attempt to become part of the symbolism of the event. Not to own the artist, of course, but to connect his spectacle with the figure of power. The concert remains Kanye West's, but some of the symbolic capital it generates may begin to reflect on the political sponsor as well.

Equally symbolic was the book that Kanye West received as a gift from the Prime Minister: The Albanian Files. It does not matter whether the book is read as a work of architecture, a political document or an object of public controversy. In this case, what matters is the act of donation itself.

In anthropology, gifts are never completely neutral. They create relationships, communicate values, and produce meanings. Selecting a particular book to gift to a globally influential artist is, in itself, an act of symbolic communication.
If the financing of the concert can be read as an attempt to enter into the symbolism of the spectacle, then this gift can also be interpreted as part of the same strategy: an attempt to connect the artist, if only for a moment, with the narrative that the authorities want to project for themselves. It is no longer just a book. It becomes part of the political ritual of the spectacle.

In this perspective, it doesn't matter whether Kanye West will ever read the book. What matters is that the book became part of the scene. And once an object enters the stage of the spectacle, it ceases to be just an object; it becomes a symbol.

The sociologist Pierre Bourdieu would call this an attempt to appropriate symbolic capital. While Guy Debord would see it as a typical example of the way the spectacle produces and organizes social meanings. Both remind us that politics is not developed only through laws, institutions, or elections. It is also developed through images, emotions, and symbolism.

Therefore, the question goes beyond the debate over whether the concert was successful or whether the state had the right to finance it.

The question is:
Did the Albanian government and Prime Minister Rama try to appropriate the symbolism of Kanye West's spectacle?

When a government invests millions of euros in an event built on the prestige of a global artist, does it aim only for economic gain, or does it seek to become part of the prestige that that artist produces? And why does a government or a prime minister need this prestige precisely on the forty-third day of a unique protest like the Flamingos in Albania?

In contemporary politics, the government constantly tries to control events, but one of the most sophisticated ways to do this is through the control of narrative and symbols. In this perspective, the sponsorship of Kanye West’s spectacle can be interpreted as an attempt to symbolically link him to the figure of the Albanian Prime Minister. A private event of the singer in Albania was presented in the public discourse by the government as an event of international importance, carried out with the support of the government and under the personal care of Edi Rama. A possible reading of this strategy is that it aimed to build a narrative where the spectacle itself would function as a symbolic counterweight to the protest.

And perhaps that was what four million euros bought: the opportunity to enter the symbolic narrative that that spectacle produced.

If symbolic capital can be purchased through sponsorship of a spectacle, where does patriotism end, where does culture end, and where does propaganda begin?