Peaceful protesters, police clash after rapper jailed in Spain

A fifth night of peaceful protests to denounce the imprisonment of a Spanish rap artist once more devolved into clashes between police and the members of fringe groups who set up street barricades and smashed storefront windows Saturday night in downtown Barcelona.

Small groups made up mostly of young people began their nightly cat-andmouse game with officers an hour after several thousand protesters gathered in the capital of Spain’s Catalonia region, which also was where the worst violence took place during earlier demonstrations this week over rapper Pablo Hasel’s detention.

Police were also pelted by rocks after a march in the Catalan town of Lleida, where Hasel spent 24 hours barricaded a university building before police took him away to serve a 9month prison sentence for insulting the Spanish monarchy and praising terrorist violence in his music.

Catalonia’s regional police force said there also was defiance in Tarragona, where groups threw glass bottles at police lines and smashed store windows.

Police reported at least 11 arrests from Saturday, including three minors. The worst of the rioting occurred on Barcelona’s Passeig de Gracia, the city’s most fashionable shopping boulevard, home to art-deco apartment buildings considered architectural treasures.

The mob worked its way up the street, smashing store front windows, toppling motorbikes, and mounting barricades with metal street barriers and burning trash containers to slow the police pursuit. Some even took the fight to police lines, forcing officers to use shields to protect them from hurled rocks.