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 who has portrayed his case as a struggle for free speech.
In Barcelona, several thousand protesters set fire to bins and threw stones at police. Several shops and a bank were damaged amid chaotic scenes on one of the city’s main streets. The minor demonstrations took place in Valencia and Palma de Mallorca, according to Spanish media.
A 24-hour clash between police and Spanish rapper Pablo Hasél ended on Tuesday when riot police arrested the artist shortly after dawn and escorted him outside the rectory building of the University of Lleida. He and more than 50 supporters were locked up at the university in the northeastern region of Catalonia on Monday at noon.
Hasel was sent to prison, where he served a 9-month sentence for insulting the monarchy and glorifying terrorism.
The college barricade was the rapper’s last effort to avoid serving his sentence and to draw attention to what he says is a campaign for free speech. He has faced criticism and legal action for some of his statements, including some on the monarchy and the need for armed resistance.
“We will win! They will never bend us with all their repression!” Said the 32-year-old rapper as he passed the television news cameras.
The case of Hasél, whose name is Pablo Rivadulla Duró, has attracted attention in Spain, with many members of the public, artists, celebrities and politicians who showed their support and demanded a change in the so-called “Law of gags ” of the country. ”
The Spanish left-wing coalition government also unexpectedly announced last week that it would change the country’s penal code to eliminate prison sentences for crimes related to freedom of expression. He did not specifically mention Hasel or set a timetable for the changes.
The rapper is no stranger to controversy. With an artistic opus that includes songs with strong anti-establishment criticism, he has seen his notoriety expand among the wider Spanish public with each coincidence with the authorities.
After facing charges on at least four occasions for assault, praising extremist armed groups, breaking into private premises or insulting the country’s monarchy, in 2014 he was sentenced to 2 years in prison. But in a new case tried in 2018, judges sentenced him to a reduced sentence of 9 months behind bars for a song about former King John Charles I and 64 tweets he posted between 2014 and 2016.
The tweets were straddling the line of opinion and calls for violent insurrection, with several mentions of ETA and Grapo, two armed extremist groups that have disappeared in Spain. In the song, Hasel raped corruption linked to the former monarch, but also spoke of him as a battered wife, drunk, head of a mob mob, and frequent user of prostitution.
The Spanish National High Court on Monday rejected his last appeal to keep him out of jail. The judges said the sentence was applied to the suspension and that the offenders must serve their sentence if they fall.
Releasing Hasel from prison, the court said, would be “discriminatory” for other convicts, adding that the campaign around his case could be used to change laws in parliament, but that the courts needed to enforce the penal code. existing.
“I will not allow them to tell me what I should think, feel or say,” Hasel told The Associated Press on Monday afternoon. “This serves as an added incentive for me to keep writing the same songs.”
Jordi Dalmau, head of the Mossos d’Esquadara police in western Catalonia, said that Hasél’s arrest, which consisted of dismantling barricades of desks and benches blocking the building’s entrance, ‘had carried out’ normally ‘and that the activists did not resist. The rapper had refused last week to voluntarily respond to a subpoena to appear in jail.
Before being thrown into a police car, he shouted at supporters, “Death to the fascist state!”
More than 200 artists, including film director Pedro Almodóvar and actor Javier Bardem, had signed a petition last week to support the rapper. Amnesty International noted that Hasel’s case was the latest in a series of lawsuits against artists and social media personalities under the 2015 Public Security Act introduced by a Conservative government.
Valtònyc, another rapper convicted for similar reasons in 2018, fled to Belgium, where judicial authorities have rejected Spain’s extradition request. Other recent cases have involved puppeteers purging political satire and bloggers joking about assassinations of the authoritarian regime 1939-1975 of General Francisco Franco.
The conservative and far-right opposition rejects the Spanish government’s eleven-hour proposal to change the penal code under the law.
But Tuesday’s arrest also sparked a new political storm in the ruling left-wing Socialist coalition of its minor partner, the far-left United For We (Unidas Podemos) party.
“Everyone who brags about this ‘full democratic normalcy’ and considers themselves progressive should be ashamed,” the party tweeted on Tuesday. “Will they cover their eyes? There is no progress if we refuse to acknowledge the current democratic deficits. “
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Parra reported from Madrid. AP journalists Renata Brito in Barcelona and Ciarán Giles and Aritz Parra in Madrid contributed to this report.