MADRID – Peaceful protests in several Spanish cities turned into chaos and clashes on Wednesday after police arrested a popular rapper, Pablo Hasél, who barricaded himself inside a university to avoid a prison sentence for glorifying terrorism and denigrating the monarchy in tweets and lyrics.
Hasél, 32, was arrested on Tuesday in his hometown of Lleida, in northeastern Catalonia, and demonstrations of opposition to his incarceration increased on Wednesday night when protesters met in Madrid, Barcelona and elsewhere cities.
What started with people shouting for the rapper’s release became violent when some protesters threw bottles and set fire to it while police ran with batons and fired rubber bullets to disperse the crowd.
Mr. Hasél’s conviction and imprisonment sparked a national debate over Spanish speech regulations, which are some of the most restrictive in terms of language considered to be dangerous for state institutions.
After Hasel’s conviction, the national left-wing coalition government said it planned to revise parts of the penal code.
Mr. Hasél’s original two-year sentence has been reduced to nine months. But the fact that an artist could be arrested for the lyrics of a song or comments on Twitter galvanized Spain’s artistic community.
More than 200 prominent Spanish writers and artists signed a petition defending Hasél and warning that Spain’s current law was a threat to “all public figures who dare openly criticize the actions of state institutions”.
Protests against Hasél’s arrest began on Tuesday, when thousands of people took to the streets of Barcelona and other cities in Catalonia to demand his release.
The demonstrations continued on Wednesday and expanded to Madrid, the capital, and other cities.
Spanish police arrested 19 people in Madrid and 29 in Catalonia on Wednesday, according to local press reports. Protesters were seen throwing stones and other objects at the police, breaking windows and setting fire to garbage cans.
Journalists at the scene posted images and videos on social media showing large crowds of protesters, many of them wearing surgical masks, facing police in shock suits.
“Pablo, comrade, you are not alone”, a crowd sung on Wednesday in Lleida, the Catalan city where Mr. Hasél was arrested.
Madrid officials said on Wednesday that access to a central train station was restricted as a result of disturbances in “public order”.
Police and mostly young protesters also clashed around Puerta del Sol, a main square in Madrid, while some protesters trying to reach the Parliament building were stopped by the police. Five police officers suffered minor injuries in the clashes in Madrid, according to Europa Press, a Spanish news agency.
A Reuters journalist in Barcelona was among the wounded when police fired on the crowd, the news agency reported. Protests have also taken place in other Spanish cities, including Granada, where four protesters have been detained, according to local media.
Mr. Hasél, whose real name is Pablo Rivadulla Duró, was a popular provocateur long before he was sentenced to prison in 2018.
He 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 the longest terrorist campaigns in modern Europe.
In 2018, Spain’s Supreme Court sentenced Hasél to just over two years in prison for glorifying terrorism and insulting the monarchy. The charges focused on his arson tweets and a song he wrote about King Juan Carlos, who abdicated in 2014. A judge later reduced the sentence to nine months.
Last month, Hasél was sentenced to prison in mid-February.
Public pressure prompted the Ministry of Justice to say on Monday that it planned to change the country’s penal code to reduce sentences related to the types of speech violations for which Hasél was convicted. The ministry did not provide details about its plan.
Hasél was arrested on Tuesday after he and about 50 supporters barricaded themselves inside a building at the University of Lleida.
“They will never silence us!” he shouted to reporters as the police took him to a vehicle, reported the newspaper El País. “Death to the fascist state!”
In his last message on Twitter before being arrested, Mr. Hasél issued a warning for your supporters.
“Tomorrow could be you,” he wrote.
Spain has a history of condemning people for comments made on social media, mainly based on its law that prohibits the glorification of terrorism.
Some of these sentences have been passed against young and unknown social media users, but others target more prominent figures.
A Spanish rapper known as Valtònyc fled to Belgium in 2018 after being sentenced to prison for writing lyrics that a court found to glorify terrorism and insult the monarchy.
The rapper, whose real name is Josep Miquel Arenas, has since struggled against Spain’s efforts to extradite him from Belgium.
Hasél’s supporters include some Spanish politicians, director Pedro Almodóvar and film star Javier Bardem. Amnesty International called his prison “an excessive and disproportionate restriction on his freedom of expression”.
“No one should face criminal prosecution just for expressing themselves on social media or singing something that can be unpleasant or shocking,” said Esteban Beltrán, director of Amnesty International Spain, in a statement hours before Hasél’s arrest. “Expressions that do not clearly and directly incite violence cannot be criminalized.”
But the rapper’s legal problems may continue for some time.
Mr. Hasél’s nine-month term can be extended to more than two years because he refused to pay the fines associated with his sentence.
The police are also investigating him for alleged efforts to break into a government building in Lleida during a protest two years ago against the arrest in Germany of Carles Puigdemont, the former leader of Catalonia.
Raphael Minder reported from Madrid, and Mike Ives Hong Kong.