BARCELONA, Spain – Thousands of protesters took to the streets of Barcelona on Tuesday night to release a rapper arrested by Spanish police after he was jailed on charges of glorifying terrorism and insulting royals in his songs.
Dozens of police stormed Lleida University in northeastern Spain earlier in the day, arresting rapper Pablo Hasel after blocking himself there. Hasel, known for his radical left-wing views, missed a deadline last Friday to hand himself over to police to serve a nine-month prison sentence imposed in 2018 – a sentence that caused a stir in Spain caused and caused the government to announce that it would make freedom of speech. laws less restrictive.
Hasel was convicted of lyrics and tweets containing references to the Basque separatist paramilitary group ETA, comparing Spanish judges to Nazis and calling the former king Juan Carlos a mafia boss.
After Hasel’s arrest, Deputy Prime Minister Carmen Calvo told reporters that people in prison should not take place in a democracy like Spain because of issues of freedom of speech.
Hasel took refuge with a group of supporters at the university on Monday. They briefly clashed with police on Tuesday morning, threw chairs and emptied fire extinguishers before officers carrying guns and wearing protective headgear arrested Hasel.
News photos have shown thousands of people marching on some of Barcelona’s main streets, shouting ‘Freedom for Pablo Hasel’. Demonstrations also took place in other cities and towns in the region of Catalonia.
There were some clashes between protesters and riot police, with images of garbage cans on fire, looted shops and objects being thrown at officers to disperse the crowd, sometimes with batons and foam projectiles.
Mossos d’Escuadra, the Catalan regional police, said on Twitter that protesters were burning motorcycles and rubbish bins, creating barricades and blocking streets in Barcelona, and that 14 people had been arrested.
“It could be you”
“The victory will be ours. … There will be no forgetting and no forgiveness, ”Hasel shouted with his fist, as he was surrounded by the police and taken to jail, after tweeting the lyrics for which he was convicted a few hours earlier. has.
“Tomorrow could be you,” Hasel added in a message to his 125,000 followers.
More than 200 artists, including director Pedro Almodovar, actor Javier Bardem and singer Joan Manuel Serrat, have signed a petition opposing the imprisonment of Hasel.
The Spanish left-wing government said last week in response to the case that it would reform the “gag law” enacted by a previous government in 2015 to prevent the glorification of banned armed groups such as ETA. The law also prohibits insults against religion and the monarchy.
The government has said it will impose lighter penalties, focus only on actions that pose a risk to public order or that could provoke violence, and maintain tolerance for artistic, cultural and intellectual expressions.
ETA announced its dissolution in 2018 after a campaign of four decades of violence that ended in 2010.