BARCELONA, Spain – Thousands of protesters took to the streets of Barcelona on Tuesday evening to demand the release of a rapper arrested by Spanish police after receiving a prison sentence accused of glorifying terrorism and insulting royalty in his songs.
Dozens of police officers stormed the university of Lleida in northeastern Spain in the early hours of the day and arrested rapper Pablo Hasel after being barricaded there. Hasel, known for his radically left-wing views, missed the deadline last Friday to surrender to police to serve a nine-month prison sentence handed down in 2018, a sentence that sparked a riot in Spain and brought the government to announce that it would make freedom of speech less restrictive laws.
Hasel was convicted of letters and tweets that included references to the Basque separatist paramilitary group ETA, compared Spanish judges to the Nazis, and described former King Juan Carlos as the head of the mafia.
After Hasel’s arrest, Deputy Prime Minister Carmen Calvo told reporters that imprisoning people for issues of freedom of expression should not happen in a democracy like Spain.
Hasel took refuge on Monday at the university with a group of supporters. On Tuesday morning they briefly clashed with police, throwing chairs and emptying fire extinguishers, before officers carrying weapons and wearing protective hats arrested Hasel.
The news images showed thousands of people marching through the main streets of Barcelona shouting “Freedom for Pablo Hasel”. Protests were also held in other cities and towns in the region of Catalonia.
There were some clashes between protesters and riot police, with images showing rubbish, shops looted and objects thrown at officers trying to disperse the crowd, sometimes with sticks and foam projectiles.
The Mossos d’Escuadra, the Catalan regional police, said on Twitter that protesters burned 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 or forgiveness, “Hasel shouted, his fist raised, as he was surrounded by police and taken to jail, after several hours earlier he had retweeted the letters for which he was convicted.
“Tomorrow it could be you,” Hasel added in a message to his 125,000 followers.
More than 200 artists, including film director Pedro Almodovar, actor Javier Bardem and singer Joan Manuel Serrat, signed a petition against Hasel’s prison sentence.
The Spanish left-wing government said last week in response to the case that it would reform the “gag law” enacted in 2015 by a previous administration to prevent the glorification of banned armed groups like ETA. The law also prohibits insults against religion and the monarchy.
The government said it would introduce lighter sanctions, target only actions that pose a risk to public order or could lead to violence and advocate tolerance for artistic, cultural and intellectual forms of expression.
ETA announced its dissolution in 2018 after a four-decade campaign of violence that ended in 2010.