Updates to our Terms of Use

We are updating our Terms of Use. Please carefully review the updated Terms before proceeding to our website.

Friday, March 29, 2024 | Back issues
Courthouse News Service Courthouse News Service

Convicted Rapper in Notable Spanish ‘Gag Law’ Case Arrested

A 24-hour standoff in Spain between police and a rapper barricaded with dozens of supporters in a university ended Tuesday with anti-riot officers arresting the artist and sending him to prison, where he's set to serve a nine-month sentence for insulting the monarchy and glorifying terrorism.

LLEIDA, Spain (AP) — A 24-hour standoff in Spain between police and a rapper barricaded with dozens of supporters in a university ended Tuesday with anti-riot officers arresting the artist and sending him to prison, where he's set to serve a nine-month sentence for insulting the monarchy and glorifying terrorism.

Pablo Hasél was escorted early Tuesday by riot police out from Lleida University's rectorate building in Spain's northeastern Catalonia region, where he and over 50 supporters had locked themselves in since mid-Monday.

It was the rapper's latest effort to resist imprisonment and draw attention to what he portrays as a campaign for free speech.

"We will win! They will not bend us with all their repression, never!" the 32-year-old rapper said as he passed TV news cameras.

The case of Hasél, whose name at birth is Pablo Rivadulla Duró, has drawn increasing attention in Spain, with many members of the public, artists, celebrities and politicians showing their support and demanding a change in the country's so-called "Gag Law."

Spain's left-wing coalition government also unexpectedly announced last week that it would change the country's criminal code to eliminate prison terms for offenses involving freedom of expression. It did not specifically mention Hasél or set a timetable for the changes.

The rapper is no stranger to controversy. With an artistic opus that includes songs with strong anti-establishment criticism, he has seen his notoriety amplified among the wider Spanish public with every run-in with authorities.

Having faced charges on at least four occasions for assault, praising armed extremist groups, breaking into private premises or insulting the country's monarchy, in 2014 he was given a suspended two-year prison term. But in a new case tried in 2018, judges handed him a reduced sentence of nine months behind bars for a song about former King Juan Carlos I and 64 tweets he posted between 2014 and 2016.

The tweets straddled the line between opinion and calls to violent insurrection, with several mentions of ETA and Grapo, two now-defunct armed extremist groups in Spain. In the song, Hasél rapped about corruption tied to the former monarch but also talked about him as a wife-beater, a drunk, head of a mafia mob and a frequent user of prostitution.

Spain's National Court on Monday rejected his latest appeal to be kept out of prison. Judges said the sentencing came on the back of a suspended one and that offenders need to serve prison time if they relapse.

Sparing Hasél from imprisonment, the court said, would be "discriminatory" to other convicts, adding that the campaigning around his case could be used to change laws in parliament but that courts needed to apply the existing criminal code.

"I won't allow them to tell me what I have to think, feel or say," Hasél told The Associated Press late Monday. "This serves me as an extra stimulus to keep writing the same songs."

Jordi Dalmau, head of the Mossos d'Esquadara police for western Catalonia, said Hasél's arrest, which involved dismantling barricades of desks and benches blocking the building's entrance, had been carried out "with normality" and the activists did not resist. The rapper had refused last week to voluntarily respond to a summons to show up for prison.

Before being hurled into a police car, he shouted to supporters "Death to the fascist state!"

Over 200 artists, including film director Pedro Almodóvar and actor Javier Bardem, had signed a petition last week in support of the rapper. Amnesty International noted that Hasel's case was the latest in a string of trials of artists and social media personalities under the 2015 Public Security Law introduced by a conservative government.

Valtònyc, another rapper sentenced on similar grounds in 2018, fled to Belgium, where judicial authorities have rejected Spain's extradition request. Other recent cases have involved puppeteers purveying political satire and bloggers joking about assassinations of the 1939-1975 authoritarian regime of Gen. Francisco Franco.

The Spanish government's eleventh-hour proposal to change the criminal code under the law is being rejected by the conservative and far-right opposition.

But Tuesday's arrest also caused a new political storm in the ruling left-wing coalition led by Socialists from their smaller partner, the far-left United We Can (Unidas Podemos) party.

"All those who boast of this "full democratic normality" and consider themselves progressive should feel ashamed," the party tweeted Tuesday. "Will they cover their eyes? There is no progress if we refuse to acknowledge the current democratic deficits."


By HERNÁN MUÑOZ and ARITZ PARRA Associated Press
Parra reported from Madrid. AP journalist Ciarán Giles in Madrid contributed to this report.

Categories / Criminal, Entertainment, International, Law, Media

Subscribe to Closing Arguments

Sign up for new weekly newsletter Closing Arguments to get the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and hot cases and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world.

Loading...