We continue our in-depth column curated by Michele Muratori, leader of the Libera group, dedicated to analysing current political affairs, major institutional challenges and topics of greatest interest to the Republic of San Marino.
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In narrative and philosophical tradition, the red thread is the invisible element that connects events, people or contexts that appear unrelated, revealing the presence of a shared plot.
In the theories of Carl Gustav Jung, this thread represents the emergence of the collective unconscious — a deep substratum of archetypes, fears and shared needs that activates simultaneously in different places, translating into similar reactions in the face of the same trauma or existential upheaval.
It is precisely this invisible trail that is running through Europe’s political geography, from west to east, linking squares that appear distant and different in context and demands.
The streets of Europe’s great metropolises have once again filled with the faces of young people belonging to Generation Z.
From the major capitals of the European Union to the regions of the eastern Balkans, these mobilisations have taken on an intensity that demands analysis going beyond mere chronicle or simple accounts of street clashes.
Although the triggering motivations differ according to local peculiarities, a common matrix emerges, revolving around a profound sense of uncertainty about the future and the downsizing of expectations for social mobility.
In French cities, social tension has reignited around the issue of the cost of living, work and economic-social reforms.
With students and young workers joining traditional unions or organising in spontaneous committees, the protest reached peaks of strong confrontation, resulting in harsh clashes with law enforcement in central Paris neighbourhoods and major university hubs.
At the heart of the French grievance is the perception of a progressive loss of purchasing power, rising inflation, and opposition to an economic development model seen as unbalanced, where entering the formal labour market appears increasingly burdensome and less secure.
In Italy, the mobilisation has found its main catalysts in the housing affordability crisis, the inadequacy of school and university infrastructure, and opposition to government policies on education and job precarity.
Demonstrations in cities such as Milan, Rome and Turin have seen moments of strong tension, unfortunately marked also by disgraceful episodes of destruction, looting and violence that must be firmly condemned and distinguished from the intentions of the demonstrators.
Indeed, a clear line of demarcation must be drawn between the vast majority of young people who legitimately took to the streets to assert their rights and those groups of troublemakers or violent fringes — among whose ranks were even children as young as 11 and 12 — who exploited the march to cause disorder and attack local businesses.
Italian youth emphasise the gap between academic training and real job market opportunities, denouncing a system of fixed-term contracts or unpaid internships that indefinitely delays the achievement of economic and personal independence.
Moving to the Iberian peninsula, Spain shares many of the same critical issues as Italy, but frames them in a debate centred mainly on the housing crisis and youth employment precarity.
In Madrid and Barcelona, the vertiginous rise in rental prices is driven by touristification and gentrification — processes that redevelop working-class neighbourhoods but end up pushing out long-term residents in favour of wealthier classes and visitors.
This phenomenon has made it almost impossible for those under 30 to leave their family home.
The protests, which on several occasions have led to tensions and fines for road blockades, call into question the sustainability of the contemporary urban economic model, demanding regulatory intervention in the housing market and greater guarantees for youth employment.
The contagion of dissent has gradually spread to Belgium as well, where the capital Brussels and academic centres such as Liège have been the scene of massive student marches that turned into clashes with law enforcement, with traffic blockades and the use of water cannons and tear gas to disperse the crowds.
In this context, young people are protesting against cuts to public education funding, rising university fees, and the general increase in the cost of living in north-western European cities.
Meanwhile in Greece, in Athens and Thessaloniki, youth squares have flared up again against labour market reform plans, deregulation of working hours and the progressive privatisation of higher education, denouncing operating conditions that risk barring access to education for the less affluent.
Particularly significant is the situation in Albania, where the squares of Tirana have highlighted a dynamic of dissent that transcends the borders of the European Union while sharing its deep roots.
Protests in the country began in recent months to oppose the controversial real estate projects promoted by Jared Kushner, son-in-law of former US president Donald Trump, aimed at building luxury tourist resorts on the Albanian coast and in protected areas.
This operation has been harshly criticised by demonstrators as a symbol of speculation and the government-backed sell-off of national territory.
This initial mobilisation was quickly joined by the Generation Z revolt, giving rise to a movement with a primarily political and institutional character.
Students have taken to the streets to denounce endemic corruption, the lack of transparency in the management of public funds earmarked for education, and the dearth of prospects that for years has fuelled a strong emigration flow toward western Europe.
The clashes that occurred around the halls of power and the University of Tirana bear witness to a rift between a youth demanding structural reforms and European standards of governance, and a political system perceived as self-referential.
Comparing the Generation Z protests with the historic season of May 1968 offers a crucial key to understanding the transformation of the very idea of protest.
Nineteen sixty-eight was a cultural and existential revolution driven by the optimism of a generation born of the economic boom.
The young people of that era took to the streets supported by a solid ideological framework and a strong sense of political efficacy.
The goal was not to patch up the system’s flaws but to overturn it and redesign society from top to bottom, expanding individual rights, dismantling patriarchy and tearing down traditional hierarchies.
’68 looked to the future with the conviction that tomorrow would inherently be better than today.
Today’s Generation Z demonstrations move within a radically different framework, marked by what sociologists define as a reversal of the temporal horizon.
The defining element of today’s squares is not the construction of an ideological utopia, but defence against an immediate material regression.
Generation Z is not protesting to project society toward an abstract ideal, but to defend its own conditions of subsistence and prevent the present and future from worsening further.
While the protesters of ’68 contested the homogenisation of the affluent society from a position of relative economic security, today’s young people are fighting to access that very same well-being, now perceived as an unattainable privilege.
Another fundamental difference lies in the organisational form, information channels and political narrative.
While 1968 and the following decades were nourished by stable party newspapers, theoretical essays, permanent assemblies and structured collectives, today’s movement lives in a completely fragmented information ecosystem devoid of traditional intermediaries.
Generation Z informs itself horizontally and in a decentralised way through digital platforms, social networks, Telegram channels, content creators and short-form video.
This ecosystem filters reality through algorithms that reward virality and immediate emotional impact, completely bypassing the role of traditional journalism and party structures.
This new information model makes today’s protest extremely fast to mobilise and capable of crossing national borders within hours, allowing demands born in one city to resonate simultaneously across Europe.
At the same time, however, it reveals a strong fragility in terms of synthesis and political staying power.
Algorithmic information, fast and hyper-concentrated, generates overwhelming peaks of attention but also rapid saturation.
Without recognised leaders, reference newspapers or parties capable of channelling this viral circulation of news into a structured programmatic platform, the discontent risks burning itself out in the instinctive reaction of the present without turning into a long-term project.
The interpretation of this phenomenon remains the subject of extensive public and political debate.
On one hand, observers and supporters of these movements point out that street anger is the physiological outcome of decades of economic policies that have offloaded the weight of financial and structural crises onto the youngest generational cohorts.
From this perspective, protest is seen as an act of civic participation and legitimate defence of the social contract by those who see their fundamental rights shrinking.
On the other hand, the firm condemnation of all forms of violence, street clashes and urban damage stands as a necessity not only for the protection of public order but for the very survival of dissent itself.
Violent degenerations end up obscuring the legitimacy of the demands being made, turning anger into blind vandalism and offering an easy shortcut to those who prefer to reduce a complex social issue to a simple security problem.
While institutional and formal representative channels must remain the privileged arena for dialogue, the shortcut of physical confrontation empties protest of meaning and undermines its credibility in the eyes of public opinion.
The picture emerging from Europe’s squares thus highlights a crucial challenge for Western democracies, where the ability to understand the deep causes of youth discontent and provide concrete responses to the expectations of the new generations will be one of the fundamental parameters for stability and social cohesion.
Ultimately, following that red thread means untying that knot before the anger of the streets becomes the only language left to speak to the future.
