Fierce clashes again erupt in wake of rapper’s arrest
BARCELONA, Spain — Protests in support of a jailed rapper turned violent for a sixth consecutive night in Barcelona on Sunday.
Protesters mostly dressed in black hurled stones and other objects at police officers standing guard outside the National Police headquarters in the center of the city. The capital of Spain’s Catalonia region has been the epicenter of the worst violence during previous demonstrations last 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 in a university building before police took him away to serve a ninemonth prison sentence for insulting the Spanish monarchy and praising terrorist violence in his music.
Catalonia’s police force said there also was defiance in the city of Tarragona, where groups threw bottles at police lines and smashed store windows.
The focus of the rioting Saturday occurred on Barcelona’s Passeig de Gracia, the city’s most most fashionable shopping boulevard and 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.
More than 100 people have been arrested and about an equal number injured since Hasel’s arrest on Tuesday.
Spain’s government announced before Hasel was detained that it would change the law to remove prison terms for offenses involving freedom of expression. It did not mention the rap artist or set a timetable for the changes, and its pledge appears to have done little to release the social tension that has boiled over.