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Thousands of protesters took to the streets in various Spanish cities. The arrest of a rapper in Catalonia is causing outrage.
Violent demonstrations mark Tuesday the regional capital, Barcelona. Police in riot gear stormed a demonstration on Friday, taking hundreds of protesters away by truck.
Five policemen were injured and eleven protesters have been arrested so far during the riots, he reported. the independent journalist José Miguel Sardo.
According to El País, the protesters burned containers and cars, in addition to throwing stones. In Girona, 5,000 people gathered to protest. They also threw objects at the police, who responded by firing rubber bullets.
The background to the riots is the arrest on Tuesday of rapper Pablo Hasél during a raid on a university in the city of Lleida in Catalonia, 150 km west of Barcelona. He had barricaded himself within the university campus.
ARRESTED: Rapper Pablo Hasél. Photo: STRINGER / X80002
– They will never silence us. Death by the fascist state, it is said that he screamed when the police took him away, reports BBC.
Hasél has been convicted of “glorifying terrorism” and “insulting royalty” in his lyrics, according to Reuters. In the lyrics, he is said to have referred to the Basque separatist militant group ETA and compared King Juan Carlos to a mafia boss.
The sentence was nine months in prison, but the musician refused to appear for sentencing, before police on Tuesday broke into the university where he had taken refuge and limped him.
– Tomorrow it could be you, Hasél wrote in a Twitter message, before he was arrested. The rapper is known for his radical far-left views.
Now the case has sparked a debate about freedom of expression in Spain, and rage on the street.
The arrest has sparked strong reactions, not just on the streets. 200 artists and cultural figures have signed a petition against the prison sentence. Among them are the director Pedro Almodóvar, the actor Javier Bardem and the singer Joan Manuel Serrat.
Imprisonment in cases of freedom of expression should not take place in a democracy like Spain, says Deputy Prime Minister Carmen Calvo after Hasél’s arrest.
Last week, the Spanish government opposed a series of laws introduced in 2015 by a previous administration. The laws prohibit insults to religion and the royal family, and are intended to limit the glorification of criminal groups such as ETA.
The current government wants to change this legislation.
The case is being updated.
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