BARCELONA, Spain (AP) – Protests over the imprisonment of a rapper convicted of insulting the Spanish monarchy and praising terrorist violence were marred by riots for the third night in a row on Thursday.
The plight of Pablo Hasel, who began serving a 9-month sentence in a Northeast prison this week, has sparked a heated debate over the limits of free speech in Spain and a political storm over the use of violence by both rapper supporters and police.
The minor partner of the ruling coalition, the far left United We Can (Unidas Podemos), on Thursday filed a petition for “total pardon” for Hasel and another rapper, Valtònyc, who fled to Belgium in 2018 to avoid trial accused of “Glorifying” terrorism.
But potentially deepening tensions, judicial authorities in the northeastern region of Catalonia announced that Hasél lost a recent appeal and is studying an additional 2 and a half years in prison for obstruction of justice and assault in 2017. The sentence can be appealed again to the Supreme Court of the country.
Like the previous two nights, the protests began on Thursday with large rallies in several cities that were initially peaceful.
In the regional capital of Barcelona, Barcelona, hundreds sang songs, shaved and shouted “Pablo Hasél, freedom!” and “Spanish media, manipulators!” in a central plaza before dozens broke into the main group to set fire to a barricade of rubbish bins and a construction bridge blocking a main artery of the city, throwing stones, bottles and other objects at riot police.
There were moments of tension as the flames threatened to spread to nearby buildings before firefighters arrived.
In the coastal city of Valencia in the east, police used batons to disperse protesters and detained at least eight people, according to the Spanish government’s regional delegation.
About 80 people have been arrested and more than 100 injured since Hasel was removed from a university where he had sought refuge after refusing to volunteer in prison.
The facades of the headquarters of several political parties have been scratched, a police station in the city of Vic was mistreated and protesters have significantly damaged shopping malls and bank offices in several cities, including the capital, Madrid.
The Catalan regional police have also launched an internal investigation to determine whether one of their foam bullets hit a young man who lost an eye to the protests.
The rapper and his followers claim that Hasél’s nine-month sentence for writing a critical song about former King Juan Carlos I and dozens of tweets that judges glorified some of Spain’s missing terrorist groups violate the rights of freedom of expression.
In addition to this case, the rapper has previously faced other charges or is awaiting trial for assault, praising extremist armed groups, breaking into private premises and insulting the monarchy.
Its legal situation has attracted the attention of the public because it occurs after a number of other artists and personalities of social networks have been tried for violating the Law of Public Security of the Spanish State of 2015, which was enacted by a previous conservative government and criticized by human rights organizations. .
One of them was Valtònyc, who has so far avoided extradition from Belgium.
United We Can parliamentary spokesman Jaume Asens said on Thursday that the party had taken the first step in demanding an “urgent” and “total” pardon from the two rappers. The pardons are a bureaucratic process and need the final approval of the Spanish government, which is currently in the hands of a left-wing coalition led by Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and the Asens party.
And while both sides have agreed to amend the penal code to remove prison sentences for crimes related to freedom of expression, the protests have also opened the last gap in the unstable association after the opposition disputed United We Can not to publicly condemn the violent protests.
Deputy Prime Minister Carmen Calvo, a member of the center-left socialist party, also criticized a spokeswoman for United We Can who expressed support for what she called “anti-fascist protesters fighting for freedom of expression.”
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Associated Press journalists Ciarán Giles and Aritz Parra in Madrid contributed to this report.