On Friday morning, over my first espresso for the day, just outside Turin, where my family now live, the owner of my local café gave me some friendly advice. Knowing that the children were off school last week, Alfredo told me: “Whatever you do today, don’t take the kids into Turin.”

It was wise advice.

Italy is in the grip of a wave of demonstrations driven by a powder keg of issues: the cost of living, stagnant wages, housing, education, opposition to rearmament and anger at the Government.

Friday’s national general strike was the latest. From French high schools to Lisbon, Barcelona, Brussels and Tirana, different frustrations are being expressed in the streets. Beneath them runs a common sentiment: the existing order is no longer working for everyone.

In Turin, students and union members marched behind a slogan that translates as “Lower the weapons, raise the wages”. By early afternoon, police were using a water cannon on protesters outside the Prefettura in Piazza Castello. There had been clashes in the city the previous weekend, too, and the authorities were prepared.

These protests may be taking place thousands of miles from Bermuda, but the frustrations driving them will sound uncomfortably familiar to anyone back home: stagnant wages, unaffordable housing and the growing difficulty of building a future.

I went into the city the next morning, before dawn, with a camera.

Turin had already started tidying itself up. At the foot of the monument to the Duke of Aosta, a First World War commander, a man in a hi-vis vest was pulling down the last of the placards. One had been left propped against a bronze soldier: Si lavora per vivere, non si vive. (We work to live, but we don’t get to live.)

Under the arcades of Via Roma, which stood in for Paris in Adam Sandler’s Grown Ups 3 only weeks ago, Louis Vuitton had boarded its windows in black. Nespresso had done one better and boarded up its display windows with bright pink plywood. Even the plywood is on brand in Italy.

Around the corner, a café was opening at 7am. The owner served me a caffè lungo just as one of his regulars came in, and I ended up buying the man his first espresso of the day in exchange for the intel he didn’t know he was giving. They talked about the previous day’s protests.

Very calm, the owner told him. No real fighting.

The regular grinned. So, no sign of the Maga people, then?

Apparently not.

Two things struck me from the exchange. The first was that a day involving a water cannon being used in the main square could be described as tranquillo. The second was that a theory suggested by some government ministers had already reached the coffee bar.

Who is to blame?

Europe’s governments are divided over what they are looking at. Italy’s defence minister, Guido Crosetto, described the unrest as the product of a “hybrid war” waged through TikTok, social media and YouTube. He argued that if six in ten young Italians sympathise with the protests, it is because they have been subjected to a “counter-education”. His own coalition partner, Matteo Salvini, flatly rejected the idea of a Russian hand behind it.

In France, President Macron said that he saw no visible foreign interference in the riots themselves, only foreign manipulation of how they were reported afterwards. His foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, went further, saying the protests had been exploited by hostile narratives from Russia, China, Iran and the American Maga movement. Hence my new friend at the coffee bar.

Both things can be true. Someone may be stirring the pot online. But you cannot stir an empty pot.

Italy’s youth unemployment rate was 20.3 per cent in August, according to ISTAT. Students occupying Turin’s university campus want the 33,000 student beds built with Italy’s EU recovery money taken out of private hands. An investigation this summer found that in 17 of the 19 regions examined, a supposedly price-capped room in these residences cost more than one on the open market. The argument is, at heart, about who gets access to the opportunities that public money was supposed to provide.

Giorgia Meloni put it this way: no political idea, no social hardship, no opposition to the Government can justify wrecking a shop to steal the goods. She is right about the looting. But notice the second item on her list. Even the prime minister acknowledges that hardship is there.

Why Bermuda should pay attention

It would be easy to read all this from Hamilton as someone else’s problem. Europe has strong unions, a long tradition of street protests and a habit of lighting things on fire.

But if you strip away the burning bins, the pressures underneath are the same. In some respects, Bermuda faces them more acutely than almost anywhere else. It is routinely ranked among the world’s most expensive places to live, and our small size and dependence on imported goods leave us very exposed to external forces and price shocks.

We have already felt the ripples at the pump. In April, the Government froze retail fuel prices for six months, with the minister responsible pointing out that small islands are especially exposed because they import nearly all of their refined fuel. Last month, the freeze was extended for another six months, with the Ministry of Finance offsetting importers’ losses through customs-duty relief. The pressure hasn’t gone away. It has been moved on to the public purse.

The strain on households is already measurable. In a government survey last year, nearly 70 per cent of residents reported moderate to extreme financial strain. About 53 per cent said they might consider emigrating, although only 7 per cent expected to do so within two years. The Government’s own emigration research found that cost of living was the leading reason Bermudians leave.

In a country of about 63,500 people, the departure of working-age residents has consequences well beyond the families involved. Nurses, teachers, tradesmen and women, and taxpayers are not infinitely replaceable.

People leave Bermuda for many reasons: education, careers, family, the desire to see more of the world. But whatever takes them away, the cost of living increasingly decides whether they come back. The question is no longer simply why they left; it is whether the life available at home makes returning a realistic choice.

In Europe, economic frustration can become visible in the streets. In Bermuda, some of it becomes visible in the departure lounge.

The airport is a quieter outlet than a burning car or broken shop window, and no one should wish for the alternative. But quiet does not mean inconsequential. When people decide that their future lies elsewhere, the country risks losing those who might otherwise build businesses, staff essential services and raise the next generation.

By the time the sun rose in earnest over Piazza Castello, the placards were coming down. The sign was destined for a skip. The sentence on it will be harder to dispose of.

We work to live, but we don’t get to live.

It is a sentiment borne of a particular moment in Turin, but it is not confined to Italy. I suspect plenty of young Bermudians would recognise it, too. The question for Bermuda is not whether they will take to the streets; it is whether they still believe they can build a future at home.

• Paolo Odoli is a Bermudian writer based near Turin. He was formerly aide-de-camp to two governors, and a government communications officer