An ice cream man drew attention in Italy when he showed on social media, with a choked voice, his electricity bill this month, four times more expensive than the same period last year.
“Hi guys. I’m demoralized, shocked. Today the electricity bill arrived. I don’t need to say anything. [Mais de] €5,000. Last year, in the same period, €1,370. And, in 2021, the energy had already increased”, says in the video Cristian Bulgarelli, from the Punto Gi ice cream shop, in small Carpi, a town of 71,000 inhabitants in the province of Modena.
As Bulgarelli shows, the electricity bill measured between the 1st and the 31st of July this year came to €5,128.99 (about R$26,700); in 2021, off €1,371.33 (R$7,140) for the same period. “This despite having spent less kWh now,” Bulgarelli told Sheet this Friday afternoon (19).
According to the slips, the kWh jumped from €0.09 to €0.53 in the period of one year, an increase of 489%. “Let’s pay. Let’s use the money we’ve been saving since the beginning of the year.”
The expiration date is next Tuesday (23) and consumption is correct, as he confirmed on the electricity clock. The July increase did not come as a complete surprise to Bulgarelli: the May bill had already arrived with almost double the value of 2021, around €2,200 (R$ 11,500); in June, it rose to € 3,300 (R$ 17.1 thousand).
“I blame the Italian government, which has not put increases in limits on energy companies to protect citizens,” he says. In fact, the federal administration is paying part of Bulgarelli’s bill. “Some politicians are using my post as propaganda. And they are pushing my voice forward.”
At the moment, Italy is going through (another) moment of political fervor, with legislative elections scheduled for September 25 – in which the populist far-right, with Giorgia Meloni at its head, is the favorite to lead a coalition.
“I received this bill as a result of my economic activity, but it is a problem that all Italians are facing right now”, says the ice cream man. According to him, the repercussion of the video made the local newspaper and the Gazzetta di Modena create a mobilization campaign to help small traders in the region.
“We Italians must unite to not let things run at this pace. It’s time to make yourself heard. I made the video as a complaint, not to get a discount on the ticket or to make people help me pay”, he explains.
The increase in energy costs in Europe is directly linked to the War in Ukraine – as part of the sanctions imposed on Russia for the invasion of its neighbor, the European Union agreed on a target of reducing gas imports and an embargo on the purchase of oil from Moscow. .
One of the effects of this secondary war was inflation, which is eating up the population’s salary in several sectors. The annual index in the euro zone in July reached 8.9%.
Bulgarelli is one of the three owners of the Punto Gi ice cream shop, which opened in 2014 with partners Michele Sarda and Riccardo Ferreti. In addition to the three, they have only one sporadic but registered employee.
The trio charges €21 per kilo of ice cream and, according to their accounts, produces around 11,000 kilos in the six or seven months the house is open a year – in the cold seasons, it doesn’t work. There are 30 flavors and very whimsical ice cream cakes.
The boy has a partner, but says he doesn’t think about having children with the current economic situation. “For those who are 30 years old in Italy and need to support themselves without the help of their parents, even paying rent, is a very difficult reality. Having a child today in the country is a very heavy economic commitment.”
He was born in a small town near Carpi and grew up at his parents’ ice cream parlor, the Punto G ice cream parlor. “We put the letter ia more in Punto Gi so it doesn’t stay the same,” he says, explaining the sexual connotation of his business name. “It’s to be recognized easily and captivatingly, with a smile.”
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