LLEIDA, Spain (AP) – Violent street protests broke out in some Spanish cities on Tuesday night after the arrest of a rap artist who barricaded himself at a university with dozens of supporters to avoid arrest and portrayed his case as a fight for freedom of expression.
In Barcelona, several thousand demonstrators set trash cans on fire and threw stones at the police. Several shops and a bank were damaged amid chaotic scenes on one of the city’s main streets. Minor demonstrations occurred in Valencia and Palma de Mallorca, Spanish media reported.
A 24-hour standoff between the police and Spanish rapper Pablo Hasél ended on Tuesday, when riot police arrested the artist shortly after dawn and escorted him out of the rectory building at the University of Lleida. He and more than 50 supporters locked themselves inside the university in the Catalonia region of northeastern Spain at noon on Monday.
Hasel was sent to prison, where he will serve a 9-month sentence for insulting the monarchy and glorifying terrorism.
The university barricade was the rapper’s last attempt to avoid serving his sentence and draw attention to what he says is a campaign for freedom of expression. He faced criticism and lawsuits over some of his statements, including some about the monarchy and the need for armed resistance.
“We will win! They will not bend us with all their repression, ever!” The 32-year-old rapper said as he passed TV news cameras.
The case of Hasél, whose birth name is Pablo Rivadulla Duró, has attracted more and more attention in Spain, with many audiences, artists, celebrities and politicians showing their support and demanding a change in the so-called “Law of Gag”. “
Spain’s left-wing coalition government also unexpectedly announced last week that it would change the country’s penal code to eliminate prison sentences for crimes involving freedom of expression. He did not specifically mention Hasel or set a timetable for the changes.
The rapper is no stranger to the controversy. With an artistic work that includes songs with strong anti-establishment criticism, he saw his notoriety increased among the great Spanish public at each confrontation with authorities.
Having faced charges on at least four occasions for assault, praise for armed extremist groups, invasion of private facilities or insults to the country’s monarchy, in 2014 he was sentenced to a suspended sentence of 2 years in prison. But in a new case tried in 2018, the judges gave him a reduced sentence of 9 months behind bars for a song about former king Juan Carlos I and 64 tweets he posted between 2014 and 2016.
The tweets are on the line between opinion and calls for violent uprising, with several references to ETA and Grapo, two armed extremist groups extinct in Spain. In the song, Hasél rapped about corruption linked to the ex-monarch, but also talked about him as a woman beater, drunk, mafia boss and frequent user of prostitution.
The Spanish National Court on Monday rejected its last resort to be kept out of prison. Judges said the sentence came on the back of one who was suspended and that offenders must serve a prison sentence if they have a relapse.
Saving Hasel from prison, the court said, would be “discriminatory” to other convicts, adding that the campaign around his case could be used to change laws in parliament, but that the courts needed to apply the existing penal code.
“I will not allow them to tell me what I have to think, feel or say,” Hasél told the Associated Press on Monday. “It serves as an extra incentive to keep writing the same songs.”
Jordi Dalmau, chief of police in Mossos d’Esquadara to the west of Catalonia, said that Hasél’s arrest, which involved the dismantling of barricades of desks and benches that blocked the building’s entrance, was carried out “as normal” and the activists did not resist. The rapper last week refused to respond voluntarily to a subpoena to appear in prison.
Before being thrown into a police car, he shouted to supporters “Death to the fascist state!”
More than 200 artists, including filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar and actor Javier Bardem, signed a petition last week in support of the rapper. Amnesty International noted that Hasel’s case was the latest in a series of trials by artists and social media personalities under the 2015 Public Security Act introduced by a conservative government.
Valtònyc, another rapper convicted on similar grounds in 2018, fled to Belgium, where judicial authorities rejected Spain’s extradition request. Other recent cases involved puppeteers doing political satire and bloggers joking about the assassinations of General Francisco Franco’s authoritarian regime in 1939-1975.
The Spanish government’s last-minute proposal to change the penal code under the law is being rejected by conservative and far-right opposition.
But Tuesday’s arrest also caused a new political storm in the left-wing coalition led by socialists from its smaller partner, the far-left party United We Can.
“All those who boast of this” full democratic normality “and consider themselves to be progressive should be ashamed,” the party tweeted on Tuesday. “Will they cover your eyes? There will be no progress if we refuse to acknowledge the current democratic deficits. “
__
Parra reported from Madrid. AP journalists Renata Brito in Barcelona and Ciarán Giles and Aritz Parra in Madrid and contributed to this report.