On Wednesday night in Naples, Italy, a 72-year-old retiree walked into a supermarket to buy himself a snack and found it nearly bare.
It was out of milk, yogurt and eggs. Its shelves of pasta, oils and canned tomatoes were almost empty. The vast produce section was empty save for red onions, chestnuts, two melons and a case of ornamental gourds.
“It’s worse than I expected,” said Giuseppe Crisci, the retiree, who walked out with a bag of biscuits. “And what I expected was exceptional.”
Experiences like Mr. Crisci’s played out repeatedly this week across Naples, a sprawling port city in Italy’s south where residents faced widespread shortages at their gas pumps and grocery stores.
It is the fallout from a week of strikes and road blockades by southern Italian truckers who have slowed traffic on the region’s main highways, making it harder to distribute goods. The truckers are protesting spikes in fuel costs since the start of the war in Iran. The price of gasoline in Italy has risen by about 30 percent since January, according to government data.
Naples risks “being paralyzed,” wrote Gaetano Manfredi, the city’s mayor, in a statement issued with the mayor of another southern city affected by the truckers’ strikes. The blockades were responsible, he added, for “supermarket shelves growing emptier and emptier.”
The truckers say they have no choice, blaming the government for failing to shield them from the price hikes. “We don’t want to create inconveniences,” said Salvatore Esposito, a trucker who has protested at the city port since Sunday. “But it’s necessary. At the end of the month, with our costs, we can’t live like this; we can’t work like this.”
About 90 percent of gas stations in Campania, the region where Naples is the capital, have run dry, said Gaetano La Rocca, president of a federation representing gas station operators there. In addition to snarling highways, he said, truckers have blocked access to fuel depositories where tankers fill up.
And the situation has been exacerbated by Neapolitans themselves: Fearing long-term shortages, they have stockpiled the limited amounts of food that suppliers have managed to deliver to the city’s grocery stores.
On Thursday afternoon, Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, announced that the national government would allocate the equivalent of about $200 million for truckers, farmers, and fishermen affected by high fuel costs.
Since the start of the war in Iran, gas prices have emerged as a major political issue for Ms. Meloni, a right-wing leader who won office in 2022 on a promise to protect working families. Saddled already with huge public debt, her government has spent more than the equivalent of $3 billion this year on ad hoc measures to keep gas prices low.
It was not immediately clear whether her new measures would appease the truckers.
“It’s not enough,” said Mr. Esposito, the protesting trucker.
The blockades, he said, would continue. So, residents feared, would the shortages.
“In the last day or two, it’s become terrible,” said Nunzia Fummo, 53, an administrative assistant who visited a supermarket in western Naples to find it had no milk, eggs, fruit or vegetables. It was also running low on cooking wine, canned beans and tomatoes, and toilet paper.
Ms. Fummo said she was not worried about her pantry supply at home. “But people are going crazy,” she said. “Panicking. And that’s not good.”
Carmela Apetino, 73, sitting in her family-owned pizzeria in Naples’s historic center, said that her yeast and cheese deliveries had started to slow down.
But, she said, she didn’t mind the inconvenience because she understood the truckers’ pent-up frustration. “Someone’s quiet, quiet, and then he can’t be anymore,” she said. “I think it was time for an earthquake.”
At a supermarket in Fuorigrotta, a Neapolitan suburb, store management plastered signs apologizing for “any inconvenience” caused by the logistics strike. The store was out of dairy, meat, frozen vegetables, canned tomatoes and cat litter. On its olive oil shelf, only two miniature bottles of remained on display.
“I would drive around looking for vegetables,” said Paola Cosentino, 44, but “I have no gas. I need to get to work tomorrow.”
Very few gas stations were open in Naples on Wednesday. Carmine Ciliberti, a taxi driver, said that he had driven nearly 45 minutes out of the city to find a single open pump.
Ciro Testa, 58 and unemployed, held up a prayer card of a Campanian saint, Pio of Pietrelcina. “I have three-quarters of a tank; I’m praying to Padre Pio,” said Mr. Testa. “I need this resolved soon. But attention: I’m praying that the government folds. Not the truckers.”
Dissatisfaction in Italy’s south is a particular problem for Ms. Meloni, who faces elections next year.
At Gennaro Lubrano’s small family-owned delicatessen, his shelves were still dotted with pasta, eggs and beans. His prices are higher than supermarkets’, Mr. Lubrano said, so clients haven’t rushed his store.
“For now we have enough,” he said. “But we will run out. And when we do, we’ll go protest with the truckers.”
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