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News / Nation & World

Spain arrests 80 in 3 nights of riots

Violence erupts in protests over rapper’s conviction

By RENATA BRITO and HERNÁN MUÑOZ, Associated Press
Published: February 18, 2021, 8:43pm
9 Photos
A police officer shoots rubber bullets at protesters during clashes following a protest condemning the arrest of rap singer Pablo Hasel on Wednesday night in Madrid, Spain.
A police officer shoots rubber bullets at protesters during clashes following a protest condemning the arrest of rap singer Pablo Hasel on Wednesday night in Madrid, Spain. (manu fernandez/Associated Press) Photo Gallery

BARCELONA, Spain — Protests over the imprisonment of a rapper convicted of insulting the Spanish monarchy and praising terrorist violence were marred by rioting for the third night in a row Thursday.

The plight of Pablo Hasel, who began this week to serve a 9-month sentence in a northeastern prison, has triggered a heated debate over the limits of free speech in Spain and a political storm over the use of violence by both the rapper’s supporters and the police.

The ruling coalition’s junior partner, the far-left United We Can party, on Thursday filed a petition for a “total pardon” for Hasel and another rapper, Valtonyc, who fled to Belgium in 2018 to avoid trial on charges of “glorifying” terrorism.

But potentially deepening the tension, court authorities in the northeastern Catalonia region announced that Hasel lost a recent appeal and is looking at an additional prison sentence of 2 1/2 years for obstructing justice and assault in 2017. The sentence can be appealed again before the country’s Supreme Court. Like the two previous nights, the protests began Thursday with gatherings in several cities that were, at first, peaceful.

In Catalonia’s regional capital, Barcelona, hundreds sang songs, rapped and shouted “Pablo Hasel, freedom!” and “Spanish media, manipulators!” at a central square before dozens broke off the main group to set alight a barricade of trash containers and a construction skip that blocked a main city artery, hurling stones, bottles and other objects at riot police.

There were moments of tension as flames threatened to extend to nearby buildings before firefighters arrived. In the eastern coastal city of Valencia, police used batons to disperse 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 away from a university where he had sought refuge after refusing to show up at prison.

The facades of several political parties’ headquarters have been hit with graffiti, a police station in the town of Vic was battered and protesters damaged shop fronts in several cities, including the capital, Madrid.

The Catalan regional police has also launched an internal investigation to establish whether one of their foam bullets hit a youth who lost an eye in the protests.

The rapper and his supporters say Hasel’s nine-month sentence for writing a critical song about former King Juan Carlos I, and for dozens of tweets that judges said glorified some of Spain’s defunct terrorist groups, violates free speech rights.

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