BARCELONA, Spain (AP) –
A fifth night of peaceful protests to denounce the imprisonment of a Spanish rapist once again turned into clashes between police and members of marginal groups who set up barricades in the street and broke shop windows on Saturday in the night in the center of Barcelona.
Small groups made up mostly of young people began their nightly game of cat and mouse with agents an hour after several thousand protesters gathered in the capital of the region of Catalonia, where there was also the worst violence during the previous demonstrations of ‘this week because of the rapper. Arrest of Pablo Hasél.
Police were also dragged along the rocks after a march in the Catalan town of Lleida, where Hasél spent 24 hours barricaded in a university building before police took him to serve a 9-month prison sentence. to insult the Spanish monarchy and praise terrorist violence in its music. .
Catalonia’s regional police said there was also a challenge in the city of Tarragona, where groups threw glass bottles at police lines and smashed shop windows.
Police reported at least 11 arrests as of Saturday, including three minors. The worst of the riots took place on Passeig de Gràcia in Barcelona, the most fashionable shopping boulevard in the city where there are art-deco apartment buildings considered architectural treasures.
Crowds stormed into the street, smashing windows in front of shops, knocking down motorcycles and setting up barricades with metal barriers on the street and burning rubbish bins to curb police chase. Some even took the fight to the police lines, forcing officers to use shields to protect them from the thrown rocks. Police said they had identified a “young man” for attacking a police helicopter with a laser for two hours.
After spilling from armored vans, police grabbed batons and fired foam bullets to disperse the groups.
It seems that the disorder has reached a marginal group of mainly younger people who constituted a small part of the thousands of participants who joined marches to support Hasel and oppose the Spanish laws that persecuted him.
About 90 people have been arrested and more than 100 injured since Hasel’s arrest on Tuesday.
The mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau, called for calm.
“Defending freedom of expression in no way justifies the destruction of property, frightening our fellow citizens and harming companies already hurt by the crisis” caused by the pandemic, the mayor said.
Marches were called for cities throughout Spain. Most were peaceful, but in Pamplona, in the north center, there were clashes between the police and people throwing bottles.
Madrid municipal authorities said 300 National Police officers were called in to help the city police, but a protest by several hundred people concluded in the Spanish capital without a split in trouble.
The Spanish left-wing government announced last week before Hasel’s arrest that it would change the law to eliminate prison sentences for crimes related to freedom of expression. He didn’t specifically mention the rap artist or set a timetable for the changes, and his promise seems to have done little to release the social tension that has boiled over.