Another night of fury in Madrid and Barcelona for the arrest of rapper Pablo Hasél, accused of insulting the Crown

Two days after the holding of elections with the least citizen participation in decades and during which the independence movement won more than 50% of the vote, Catalonia and Madrid they blazed up protesting the arrest of a rapper that the Spanish justice considers guilty of insulting the Crown and of apologizing for terrorism in the lyrics of its songs and through its social networks.

The imprisonment of Pablo Rivadulla – known by the name of rapper Pablo Hasél -, who had taken refuge in the presbytery of the University of Lleida, led to clashes with the police in this city, in Barcelona, ​​in Giron and Vic, Tuesday night. . where protesters took over a police station. There were 33 injured and 15 arrested. This evening, the clashes repeated themselves.

In the Gracia district of Barcelona Flares were lit and cobblestones flew against the Mossos d’Esquadra, the Catalan police. Garbage containers were set on fire and there were barricades.

A young woman who attended the demonstration on Via Augusta who confronted the police lost an eye by a rubber bullet from the Mossos.

Barcelona smelled of smoke all night long. And the scenes recalled what Catalonia experienced in October 2019, when the condemnation of pro-independence politicians jailed for organizing an illegal referendum on self-determination and for unilaterally declaring Catalonia’s independence in 2017 was known.

Barcelona City Council estimated the damage caused Tuesday evening at 70 thousand euros.

However, around thirty protests across Spain They left this Wednesday to demand the release of the rapper.

At the Puerta del Sol in Madrid, hundreds of people gathered at seven in the afternoon to protest: “Pablo Hasél kidnapped by state terrorism” read a large banner behind which they marched.

The march overflowed again and the tension spread through the narrow streets of central Madrid: garbage containers were set on fire in Calle del Correo, one of the side streets of the seat of government of the Community of Madrid and the riot police tried to disperse the protesters.

Rapper Pablo Hasél was sentenced in 2018 for 64 tweets, among which he describes the security forces as “the civil guard torturing or shooting immigrants” and the police force as “Nazi police”, and for having uploaded his song Juan Carlos el Bobón on his YouTube account.

You must serve nine months of sentence -more than 30,000 euros fine- for crimes of exaltation of terrorism, insults and slander against the Crown and against state institutions.

His case was the protagonist on Wednesday of the session of control of the government of Pedro Sánchez in Congress, where the parties of the independentist left criticized the PSOE-United Podemos coalition which governs the lack of freedom of expression due to the rapper’s imprisonment.

The boil in parliament has also been fueled by insistent statements from the second vice president and chief of Podemos, Pablo Iglesias, who during the electoral campaign for the Catalan elections which took place on Sunday called into question the democratic quality of Spain due to the situation in Catalonia with politicians imprisoned or escaped in Belgium, such as the former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont.

A few days before the deadline for the rapper to voluntarily enter prison, which Hasél did not do, Pedro Sánchez’s government announced that it was planning to change the Spanish penal code so that speech offenses ceased to exist. to purge in a dungeon.

The Palacio de la Moncloa announced the initiative of the Ministry of Justice to revise the Penal Code by an announcement that is gone of the Secretary of State for Communication Monday evening at nine o’clock, a few hours before the arrest of Hasél: “The Ministry of Justice will propose a re-examination of crimes related to excesses in the exercise of freedom of expression in order to sanction only conduct which clearly involves the creation of a risk for public order or the provocation of a certain type of violent behavior, with dissuasive sanctions, but not deprivation of liberty, ”the government statement indicated.

And he adds: “The ministry, in its proposal, will consider that verbal excesses which are committed within the framework of artistic, cultural or intellectual events, must remain outside the penal sanction.”

The reform, however, he did not arrive in time for Hasél.

Pedro Almodóvar, Joan Manuel Serrat, Javier Bardem and Fernando Trueba, among more than 200 artists, signed a manifesto in which they ask to leave the rapper alone.

Monday, at 22:44, Hasél declared on his Twitter account: “If this is the last thing I write before being imprisoned (…) I appeal to face fear and disobey so many imposition unjust tyranny more and more camouflaged. Either we do it or they will keep moving“Said the rapper.

PB