Marina Artusa
02/17/2021 18:02
Clarín.com
World
Updated 02/17/2021 7:35 PM
Two days after holding the elections with the least citizen participation in decades and in which the independence movement won more than 50 percent of the votes, Catalonia and Madrid were on
fire in protests over the arrest of a rapper
who the Spanish Justice considers guilty of insulting the Crown and to apology for terrorism in the lyrics of their songs and through their social networks.
The imprisonment of Pablo Rivadulla - known as the rapper Pablo Hasél -, who had entrenched himself in the rectory of the University of Lleida, led to clashes with the police in that city, in Barcelona, in Girón and Vic, on Tuesday night.
where protesters took over a police station.
There were 33 injured and 15 arrested.
Tonight the confrontations were repeated.
In the Gracia neighborhood of Barcelona
, flares were lit and cobblestones were blown up
against the Mossos d'Esquadra, the Catalan police.
Garbage containers were burned and there were barricades.
A young woman who was attending the demonstration on the Via Augusta who clashed with the Police
lost an eye
due to a rubber bullet from the Mossos.
A man on a skateboard during the demonstration to protest the arrest of rapper Pablo Hasel.
Photo EFE
Barcelona smelled of smoke all night.
And the scenes were reminiscent of what Catalonia experienced in October 2019, when the conviction of the independence politicians imprisoned for having organized an illegal referendum on self-determination and for having unilaterally declared the independence of Catalonia in 2017 was known.
The Barcelona City Council
estimated the damage caused on Tuesday night at 70,000 euros.
However, some thirty demonstrations throughout Spain took
to the streets again 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 to the narrow streets of the center of Madrid: garbage containers were burned in Calle del Correo, one of the side streets of the government headquarters of the Community of Madrid and the anti-police police. riots tried to disperse the protesters.
Rapper Pablo Hasél was convicted in 2018 for 64 tweets
, among which he refers to the security forces as “Civil Guard torturing or shooting immigrants” and to the police force as “Nazi-onal Police”, and for having uploaded to his account from YouTube his song Juan Carlos el Bobón.
He must serve a nine-month sentence
- plus a 30,000 euro fine - for the crimes of exalting terrorism, insults and slander against the Crown and against State institutions.
His case was the protagonist this Wednesday of the control session of the Pedro Sánchez government in Congress, where the parties of the pro-independence left reproached the PSOE-United Podemos coalition, which governs
the lack of freedom of expression due to the imprisonment of the rapper.
Pablo Hasel, in Lleida, Catalonia (Spain).
Photo Europa Press
The boiling in Parliament was also fueled by the insistent statements of the second vice president and leader of Podemos, Pablo Iglesias, who
during the electoral campaign for the Catalan elections
that were held on Sunday questioned the democratic quality of Spain due to the situation that Catalonia lives with politicians imprisoned or escaped in Belgium, such as former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont.
Days before the deadline for the rapper to voluntarily enter jail, something that Hasél did not do, the Pedro Sánchez government announced that it planned to modify the Spanish Penal Code so that those known as crimes of expression stop purging themselves in a dungeon.
The Palacio de la Moncloa announced the initiative of the Ministry of Justice to review the Penal Code in
an announcement that came
from the Secretary of State for Communication at nine o'clock on Monday night, hours before Hasél's arrest: “The The Ministry of Justice will propose a review of crimes related to excesses in the exercise of freedom of expression so that only conduct that clearly entails the creation of a risk to public order or the provocation of some type of violent conduct is punished, with penalties dissuasive, but not depriving of liberty, "says the government statement.
And he adds: "The ministry, in its proposal, will consider that those verbal excesses that are committed in the context of artistic, cultural or intellectual manifestations, should remain outside of criminal punishment."
The reform, however,
did not come 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 that the rapper be left alone.
On Monday, at 10:44 p.m., Hasél stated on his Twitter account: “If this is the last thing I write before being imprisoned (…) I make a call to face fear and disobey so many unjust impositions of a tyranny every time more camouflaged.
Either we do it or they will keep moving forward,
"said the rapper.
PB
Look also
The extreme right continues to advance in Spain: Vox makes its footing in the Catalan Parliament
Night of fury in Catalonia for the controversial arrest of a rapper