LLEIDA, Spain (AP) – Violent street protests erupted in some Spanish cities on Tuesday night after the arrest of a rap artist who barricaded himself at a university with dozens of supporters to avoid prison and portrayed his case as a struggle for freedom of speech .
In Barcelona, several thousand protesters set fire to trash cans and pelted police with stones. Several shops and a bank were damaged amid chaotic scenes in one of the city’s main streets. Smaller protests took place in Valencia and Palma de Mallorca, Spanish media reported.
A 24-hour endurance ride between police and Spanish rapper Pablo Hasél ended on Tuesday when anti-riot officers arrested the artist shortly after dawn and escorted him from the rector’s building of Lleida University. He and more than 50 supporters locked themselves inside the university in the northeastern Catalonia region on Monday afternoon.
Hazel was sent to prison, where he is due to serve a 9-month sentence for insulting the monarchy and glorifying terrorism.
The university blockade was the rapper’s latest attempt not to serve his sentence and to draw attention to what he says is a campaign for freedom of expression. He has drawn criticism and legal action over some of his rulings, including the monarchy and the need for armed resistance.
“We will win! They will not bend us with all their oppression, never!” The 32-year-old rapper said as he passed TV news cameras.
The case of Hasél, named after Pablo Rivadulla Duró at birth, has attracted increasing attention in Spain, with many members of the public, artists, celebrities and politicians showing their support and a change in the so-called ‘Gag Law’ of the country demands. ”
Spain’s left-wing coalition government also unexpectedly announced last week that it would change the country’s criminal legislation to eliminate imprisonment for violations of freedom of expression. No specific mention was made of Hasél or a timetable for the changes.
The rapper is no stranger to controversy. With an artistic opus containing songs with strong anti-establishment criticism, he saw his fame among the wider Spanish public strengthen with each run-up to authorities.
After being charged at least four times with assault, praising armed extremist groups, invading private premises or insulting the country’s monarchy, in 2014 he received a suspended prison sentence of 2 years. But in a new case heard in 2018, judges imposed a reduced sentence of 9 months behind bars for a song about former King Juan Carlos I and 64 tweets he posted between 2014 and 2016.
The tweets lie across the border between opinion and calls for violent insurgency, with several mentions of ETA and Grapo, two armed extremist groups in Spain. In the song, Hasél scratched about corruption linked to the former monarch, but also talked about him as a womanizer, a drunk, head of a mafia crowd and a regular user of prostitution.
The Spanish national court on Monday rejected his latest appeal to be kept out of jail. Judges said the sentencing comes on the back of a suspended and that offenders should serve jail time if they fall back.
According to the court, Hasél’s ruling from the prison sentence would be a discriminatory factor for other convicts, adding that the campaign around his case could be used to change laws in parliament, but that courts should apply the existing criminal law.
“I will not let them tell me what to think, feel or say,” Hasél told The Associated Press late Monday. “It’s an extra stimulus for me to write the same songs.”
Jordi Dalmau, head of the Mossos d’Esquadara police in Western Catalonia, said the arrest of Hasél, who broke down barricades of desks and benches that blocked the entrance to the building, was carried out ‘with’ normalcy ‘ the activists did not oppose it. The rapper last week refused to respond voluntarily to a subpoena to show up in jail.
Before being thrown into a police car, he shouted at the supporters, “Death to the fascist state!”
More than 200 artists, including director Pedro Almodóvar and actor Javier Bardem, signed a petition in support of the rapper last week. Amnesty International noted that Hasel’s case was the latest in a series of hearings of artists and social media personalities under the 2015 Conservative Government Act.
Valtònyc, another rapper sentenced in 2018 on similar grounds, fled to Belgium, where judicial authorities rejected Spain’s extradition request. In recent cases, puppets have been investigating political satire and bloggers are joking about assassinations of General Francisco Franco’s authoritarian rule in 1939-1975.
The Spanish government’s eleventh-hour proposal to change the criminal law under the law is rejected by the conservative and far-right opposition.
But the arrest on Tuesday also caused a new political storm in the ruling left-wing coalition led by socialists from their smaller partner, the far-left United We Can (Unidas Podemos) party.
“Everyone who boasts of this ‘full democratic normality’ and considers themselves progressive should be ashamed,” the party tweeted on Tuesday. Will they close their eyes? There is no progress if we refuse to acknowledge the current democratic deficits. ”
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Parra reports from Madrid. AP journalists Renata Brito in Barcelona and Ciarán Giles and Aritz Parra in Madrid and contributed to this report.