Well I think the warmer parts of Italy are pretty excellent locations for these plants. Your agave is spectacular and growing ever more so with each passing day. Enjoy the show. I wouldn't mind seeing more pics as the flowers develop.
Most agaves apparently decide to bloom a couple of years in advance. So maybe there was an unusually rainy winter a couple of years ago, or something like that. We have agaves growing wild here and it is kind of a mystery why some years or locations are much more floriferous than others. The changes involved do take a lot more time to unfold than the actual production of the inflorescence.
On the flip side, there are times when flowering is not desirable, at least among agaves. Having witnessed various productions, I can say there are certain plants in the garden whose flowering I kind of dread. Not so much because of the event itself (what's not to like, right?) but because of the cleanup and removal required afterward. Back breaking work, and moderately hazardous.
I actually make a point of never watering the americanas here, allowing them to get by on our 25cm/year of annual rainfall (70% in winter, none in summer), with the goal of reducing their final size, keeping the number of offsets down, and delaying the flowering event as long as possible.
Aloe flowering is a bit of a different story, or at least a different timetable, given that flowering does not lead to the death of the plant. Most aloes seem to have a preferred flowering season (here and probably in most places it is late fall and winter, though there are plants that bloom in the spring and summer too). Some aloes (especially hybrids) may bloom off and on year round, it varies.
In general, a happy aloe (with good availability of water and nutrients) will bloom in much greater abundance, if not necessarily more often.
