Sixth night of violent protests in Barcelona against the arrest of rapper Pablo Hasél

Protests against the arrest of the imprisoned rapper Pablo Hasél turned violent for the sixth consecutive night in Barcelona on Sunday.

The demonstrators, dressed in black, they threw stones and other objects at the police officers in front of the national police headquarters in the center of this Spanish city.

With the cries of “Liberty Pablo Hasél”, several hundred people also gathered in front of Sants station, which was heavily guarded by riot troops of the Catalan police, the Mossos d’Esquadra, showed pictures of AFPTV.

Then, the demonstrators marched towards the center of the Catalan capital, where they wanted to continue the protest.

Since Tuesday, the streets of Spain’s second city have become the scene of violent clashes between demonstrators and police, with barricades, containers on fire and multiple destruction.

Saturday night, incidents included looting of clothing stores and damage to historic buildingss of Barcelona, ​​like the Palace of Music.

Since Tuesday, a hundred people arrested by police in Barcelona and other towns in Catalaña, authorities said.

Hasél’s defense initiatives too they have spread in recent days to other cities like Madrid. More than 100 people have been arrested since Tuesday.

Hasél, 32 years old and with a criminal record, was sentenced to nine months in prison for glorifying terrorism in tweets in which he described King Juan Carlos I as a “mafioso”, praised those involved in the attacks and accused police murder and torture. migrants and demonstrators.

A relatively anonymous singer before his legal troubles led to his imprisonment, is a provocative rapper with inflammatory lyrics who has become a symbol of freedom of expression for part of Spanish public opinion.

The 32-year-old Catalan, sentenced to nine months in prison for around tweets from several years ago attack the monarchy and the police, has received the support of Spanish celebrities such as filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar, actor Javier Bardem or singer Joan Manuel Serrat.

His case even grew to the leftist government of Pedro Sánchez to promise a reform of the penal code so that artists’ “excesses” in using freedom of expression do not lead to prison sentences.

In his tweets, Hasél had called the police “shitty mercenaries” and accused them of torturers and murderers. Too called the royal family a mafia and a criminal.

The messages are in line with the incendiary and revolutionary lyrics of the rapper’s songs, whose serious demeanor, with a finely cropped beard and small piercing eyes has appeared in several graffiti calling for his freedom.

Before conviction, the Spanish prosecution highlighted in its indictment a total of 64 tweets in which the rapper addressed Juan Carlos I and the royal family with the qualifiers of “Parasites”, “gangsters”, “thief”, “Mafia and medieval monarchy”, “Criminal group”. According to prosecutor Campos Navas, these remarks were “totally impertinent and unnecessary” to express the ideas of the rapper and “They undermine the dignity of the King Emeritus, undermine his fame or undermine his own esteem”, they therefore constitute a crime of insults against the Crown.

The prosecution also argued that Hasel was the author of a crime of insults and slander against state institutions, because his words threaten the “dignity” of the security forces and bodies. In this sense, the indictment highlights the sentences: “The Civil Guard torturing or killing immigrants”; “Gang of psychopaths who beat up those of us who claim our rights”; “Riot police have always beaten and tortured thousands of people”, or “police kill with impunity”.

His subversive lyrics are sometimes borderline, like in the song Juan Carlos the Bobón in which the rapper takes a tour of the life of the monarch emeritus and which the prosecutor quoted, along with the tweets, to call for Hásel’s conviction.

His arrest, moreover, deepened the differences within the government coalition, between the Socialists, Sánchez, and the game Can we (radical left), which defended the demonstrations.

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