Żepp’s Wake-Up Call: How One Man’s September 21 Protest Became a National Conversation

Valletta’s Republic Street was still yawning itself awake on the morning of 21 September 2025 when Żepp Pisani, 67, parked his sky-blue 1979 Bedford van sideways across the City Gate archway, unfurled a hand-painted banner reading “Kif se nsalvaw il-futur?” and switched on a tinny cassette of Fredu Abela’s “Ħares Ħafna”. By 7.30 a.m. the first TikTok was already ricocheting through Maltese group chats; by 9.00 a.m. every radio current-affairs programme had dropped its schedule; by lunchtime #Żepp was the top trending tag from Nadur to Naxxar. What began as a one-man traffic stunt has morphed into the island’s most unlikely national reckoning since the 2019 protests.

Locals know Żepp as the retired Gudja stone-carver who used to sculpt gargoyles for parish churches and, more recently, sarcastic memes on Facebook under the handle “Żepp tal-Graffiti”. Few realised the pensioner had spent the summer cycling to every coastal village, filming illegal boathouses, diesel slicks and cruise-ship brume, then stitching the clips into a 14-minute video titled “21 ta’ Settembru – Jum il-Ħsara”. When he warned online that he would “block the door to fortress Malta” on the autumn equinox, most assumed it was another bout of colourful doom-scrolling. Instead, commuters arrived to find the capital’s artery corked by a van whose bumper sticker read: “Your children can’t eat concrete.”

Police initially threatened arrest for obstruction, but a crowd of early-morning shopkeepers, university students and tourists quickly formed a human ring, chanting “Ħallih! Ħallih!” (Let him stay). Officers backed off, redirecting buses through the upper gardens. By 10 a.m. the square resembled a village festa: pastizzi vendors handed out free ricotta parcels, someone set up a makeshift sound-system pumping traditional żaqq music, and environmental NGOs erected pop-up stalls signing new members faster than festa tombola. Tourists asked if this was “some kind of Maltese carnival”. Maltese replied, “No, it’s our conscience on four flat tyres.”

The timing was no accident. September 21 marks both the United Nations International Day of Peace and, locally, the eve of Malta’s Independence celebrations. Żepp chose the date to contrast the island’s patriotic fireworks with what he calls “the slow-burn explosion of over-development”. His handwritten manifesto, photocopied and passed around like samizdat, lists six demands: a moratorium on new petrol stations, a €100 million solar-roof grant scheme, a public register of construction-industry political donations, full enforcement of the 2016 ODZ policy, a national tree-planting quota tied to GDP growth, and a binding referendum on cruise-ship caps. “I’m not against business,” Żepp told the crowd from atop his van roof. “I’m against business killing our grandchildren.”

By early afternoon, Prime Minister Roberta Tedesco Triccas appeared, flanked by cameras, and agreed to receive a delegation of protesters inside Castille. Two hours later she emerged promising a “White Paper on Coastal Carrying Capacity” within 60 days and a cross-party round-table on environmental impact bonds. Opposition leader Bernard Grech, caught mid-campaign in Gozo, dialled in live to ONE Radio endorsing Żepp’s call for transparency, while ADPD announced it would table a parliamentary motion to enshrine the right to clean air in the Constitution. Even the Malta Developers Association issued a cautiously worded statement praising “citizen engagement” and urging “balanced solutions”—a semantic pirouette that set social media alight with sarcastic GIFs of bulldozers doing ballet.

The ripple effects were immediate. That evening, three coastal mayors—Sliema, Marsaskala and Mellieħa—declared they would freeze new basement-excavation permits pending a national capacity study. University of Malta renaissance Professor Arnold Cassar told Times of Malta the protest recalled the 1958 dockyard strikes “in its spontaneous moral clarity”. Meanwhile, Żepp’s video surpassed 1.2 million views—equivalent to twice Malta’s population—triggering copycat actions: cyclists blocked the Gozo ferry ramp calling for better bike lanes, and divers hung a banner beneath the Blue Grotto reading “Submerged by Greed”.

Yet the most profound impact may be generational. Students who skipped lectures to stand with Żepp formed a new pressure group, “Equinox Malta”, pledging to field candidates in the 2027 MEP elections on a single-issue green ticket. At sunset, as tow-trucks finally prepared to remove the Bedford, the crowd broke into an impromptu chorus of the national anthem, arms linked across the Triton Fountain. Żepp, visibly exhausted, was hoisted onto shoulders like a village saint. “I only wanted to carve stone,” he whispered to Lovin Malta. “Turns out the hardest rock is people’s hearts. Today they cracked.”

Whether the White Paper becomes landmark reform or another shelf ornament remains to be seen, but few dispute that 21 September 2025 rewrote the rules of civic protest in Malta. In a country where partisan flags usually outnumber national ones, Żepp’s sky-blue van proved a rare colour no party can claim—reminding islanders that sometimes the smallest chisel, wielded stubbornly enough, can reshape the archipelago.