BARCELONA, Spain (AP) – Protests against the arrest of a rapper convicted of insulting the Spanish monarchy and praising the terrorist violence were marked by riots for the third consecutive night on Thursday.
The situation of Pablo Hasél, who began this week to serve a 9-month sentence in a northeastern prison, generated a heated debate over the limits of freedom of expression in Spain and a political storm about the use of violence by both supporters of the rapper as the police.
The junior partner of the governing coalition, the extreme left party United We Can, presented on Thursday a petition of “total forgiveness” to Hasél and another rapper, Valtònyc, who fled to Belgium in 2018 to avoid the trial on charges of “Glorifying” terrorism.
But, potentially deepening tension, judicial authorities in northeastern Catalonia have announced that Hasél has lost a recent appeal and is looking at an additional 2 1/2 year prison sentence for obstruction of justice and aggression in 2017. The sentence can be appealed again before the country’s Supreme Court.
As on the previous two nights, the protests started Thursday with large crowds in several cities that were, at first, mostly peaceful.
In the regional capital of Catalonia, Barcelona, hundreds sang songs, rapped and shouted “Pablo Hasél, freedom!” and “Spanish media, manipulators!” in a central square before dozens separated the main group to set fire to a barricade of garbage containers and a construction bucket that blocked a main artery in the city, throwing stones, bottles and other objects into the riot gear.
There were moments of tension when the flames threatened to spread to nearby buildings before the firefighters arrived.
In the coastal city of Valencia, police used batons to disperse the protesters and arrested at least eight people, according to the Spanish government’s regional delegation.
Nearly 80 people have been arrested and more than 100 injured since Hasel was taken from a university where he took refuge after refusing to appear in prison voluntarily.
The facades of the headquarters of several political parties were graffiti, a police station in the city of Vic was attacked and the protesters significantly damaged storefronts and banks in several cities, including the capital, Madrid.
Catalan regional police have also launched an internal investigation to determine whether one of their foam bullets hit a young man who lost an eye in the protests.
The rapper and his supporters say Hasél’s nine-month sentence for writing a critical song about former king Juan Carlos I, and dozens of tweets that judges said glorified some of Spain’s extinct terrorist groups, violates the right to freedom of expression.
In addition to this case, the rapper has already faced other charges or awaits trials for aggression, praising armed extremist groups, invading private facilities and insulting the monarchy.
His legal situation attracted considerable public attention because it came after a series of other artists and social media personalities were tried for violating the Spanish Public Security Act of 2015, which was promulgated by a previous government led by conservatives and criticized by organizations human rights.
One of them was Valtònyc, who has so far prevented extradition from Belgium.
United We Can parliamentary spokesman Jaume Asens said on Thursday that the party had taken the first step to demand an “urgent” and “total” pardon from both rappers. Forgiveness is a bureaucratic process and needs final approval from the Spanish government, which is currently in the hands of a left-wing coalition led by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and the Asens party.
And while both parties agreed to amend the penal code to eliminate prison sentences for crimes involving freedom of expression, the protests also opened up the last division in the unstable partnership after the opposition criticized United We Can for not publicly condemning the protests. violent.
Deputy Prime Minister Carmen Calvo, a member of the center-left Socialist Party, also criticized a spokesman for United We Can, who expressed support for what she called “anti-fascist protesters fighting for freedom of expression”.
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Associated Press journalists Ciarán Giles and Aritz Parra in Madrid contributed to this report.