Pablo Hasél Protests: Clashes in Madrid and Barcelona
MADRID — Largely peaceable protests in a number of Spanish cities descended into chaos and clashes on Wednesday after the police arrested a well-liked rapper, Pablo Hasél, who had barricaded himself inside a college to keep away from a jail sentence on prices that he had glorified terrorism and denigrated the monarchy in tweets and lyrics.
Mr. Hasél, 32, was arrested on Tuesday in his dwelling metropolis of Lleida, in the northeastern area of Catalonia, and the demonstrations opposing his incarceration swelled in measurement Wednesday night time as protesters gathered in Madrid, Barcelona and different cities.
What began with folks chanting for the rapper’s launch turned violent as some protesters hurled bottles and set fires as officers rushed in with batons and fired rubber bullets to disperse the crowds.
The conviction and arrest of Mr. Hasél have set off a nationwide debate over Spanish laws on speech, that are among the most restrictive on language deemed harmful to state establishments.
After Mr. Hasél’s conviction, the nationwide left-wing coalition authorities stated it deliberate to overtake elements of the felony code.
Mr. Hasél’s unique two-year sentence was diminished to 9 months. But the truth that an artist might be imprisoned over the lyrics of a music or feedback on Twitter has galvanized Spain’s creative group.
More than 200 distinguished Spanish writers and artists signed a petition defending Mr. Hasél and warning that Spain’s present regulation was a risk to “all public personalities who dare to openly criticize the actions of state institutions.”
Protests over Mr. Hasél’s arrest started on Tuesday, when 1000’s of individuals took to the streets in Barcelona and different cities in Catalonia to demand his launch.
The demonstrations continued on Wednesday and expanded to Madrid, the capital, and different cities.
The Spanish police detained 19 folks in Madrid and 29 in Catalonia on Wednesday, in response to native information experiences. Protesters had been seen throwing stones and different objects on the police, smashing home windows and setting trash cans on hearth.
Journalists on the scene posted photos and movies on social media exhibiting massive crowds of protesters, lots of them carrying surgical masks, squaring off towards cops in riot gear.
“Pablo, comrade, you are not alone,” one crowd chanted on Wednesday in Lleida.
The authorities in Madrid said on Wednesday that access to a central train station had been restricted as a result of disturbances to “public order.”
Protests continued Thursday when about 300 demonstrators clashed with the police in downtown Barcelona, throwing stones and setting fires. At least six people were detained and two officers injured.
Police officers and mostly young demonstrators also clashed around Puerta del Sol, a main square in Madrid, as some protesters who sought to reach the Parliament building were stopped by the police. Five officers suffered minor injuries in the clashes in Madrid, according to Europa Press, a Spanish news agency.
A Reuters journalist in Barcelona was among those injured when officers fired rubber bullets into a crowd, the news agency reported. Protests also took place in other Spanish cities, including Granada, where four demonstrators were detained, according to local news outlets.
Mr. Hasél, whose real name is Pablo Rivadulla Duró, was a popular provocateur well before he was sentenced to prison in 2018.
He has accused the Spanish police of brutality, compared judges to Nazis and expressed support for ETA, a Basque separatist group that dissolved two years ago after waging one of modern Europe’s longest terrorism campaigns.
In 2018, Spain’s High Court sentenced Mr. Hasél to just over two years in prison on charges of glorifying terrorism and insulting the monarchy. The charges focused on his tweets and a song he had written about King Juan Carlos, who abdicated in 2014. A judge later reduced the sentence to nine months.
Last month, Mr. Hasél was ordered to report to prison by mid-February.
The public pressure led the Justice Ministry to say on Monday that it planned to change the country’s criminal code to reduce sentences related to the kinds of speech violations for which Mr. Hasél was sentenced. The ministry did not provide specifics about its plan.
Mr. Hasél was arrested on Tuesday after he and about 50 supporters barricaded themselves inside a building at Lleida University.
“They will never silence us!” he yelled to reporters as the police led him to a patrol car, the newspaper El País reported. “Death to the fascist state!”
In his last Twitter message before he was incarcerated, Mr. Hasél issued a warning to his supporters.
“Tomorrow it can be you,” he wrote.
Spain has a history of sentencing people for comments made on social media, based mostly on its law that forbids the glorification of terrorism.
Some of these sentences have been handed down against young and unknown social media users, but others have targeted more prominent figures.
A Spanish rapper known as Valtònyc fled to Belgium in 2018 after getting a prison sentence for writing song lyrics that a court found glorified terrorism and insulted the monarchy.
The rapper, whose real name is Josep Miquel Arenas, has since been fighting Spain’s efforts to extradite him from Belgium.
Mr. Hasél’s supporters include some Spanish politicians, the director Pedro Almodóvar and the movie star Javier Bardem. Amnesty International called his arrest “an excessive and disproportionate restriction on his freedom of expression.”
“No one should face criminal prosecution only for expressing themselves on social media or for singing something that may be distasteful or shocking,” Esteban Beltrán, the director of Amnesty International Spain, said in a statement hours before Mr. Hasél’s arrest. “Expressions that do not clearly and directly incite violence cannot be criminalized.”
But the rapper’s legal troubles could continue for some time.
Mr. Hasél’s nine-month term may be lengthened to more than two years because he has refused to pay fines associated with his sentence.
The police are also investigating him over alleged efforts to break into a government building in Lleida during a protest two years ago over the detention in Germany of Carles Puigdemont, the former leader of Catalonia.
Raphael Minder reported from Madrid, and Mike Ives from Hong Kong.
