(CN) --- One Spanish rapper --- Pablo Hasél --- sits in prison. His crime? Militant statements and lyrics angrily advocating an end (violent, if necessary) to Spain's monarchy and corrupt politicians. Another militant Spanish rapper --- known as Valtònyc --- is in self-exile in Brussels, the capital of the European Union. Why? Spain wants to imprison him too for his politically violent and anti-government lyrics.
These two rappers with their radical left-wing and pro-republican politics are Spain's most high-profile figures in a debate as old as human civilization: What are the limits on expression?
In Spain, a lot is off limits and the recent jailing of Hasél has turned the Iberian peninsula into a central battleground in Europe over freedom of expression.
Europe's laws on free speech are more restrictive than in the United States, where the First Amendment provides extensive and near-absolute protections for speech, even for many violently offensive, slanderous, hate-filled and controversial statements.
European law, on the other hand, is based on international standards as spelled out in the 1953 European Convention on Human Rights and the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, a treaty on civil and political rights adopted by the United Nations General Assembly. These international standards allow more restrictions, and consequently people in Europe have been prosecuted for denigrating minorities, denying the Holocaust, displaying Nazi symbols and rapping in support of militants.
“There is a certain understanding of European countries as being very tolerant or really honoring the sort of core republican or liberal values, but in practice this isn't as true as we sometimes would like to think,” said Emmy Eklundh, an expert on Spanish politics at Cardiff University, in a telephone interview. “If you start digging in Spain or in France, then you will see that there are quite a few restrictions to these freedoms for regular citizens.”
In part, the narrower understanding of free speech is meant to foster tolerant democratic societies by rooting out evils from Europe's past, such as the horrors perpetrated by Nazi, Fascist, Marxist and religious ideologies. But it's a delicate balance and often it can seem that Europe is unable to escape a history of repressive statist power.
In Spain, the criminal code is so protective of officialdom that it's a crime to praise terrorists, insult the Spanish king and state, burn the Spanish flag and desecrate state symbols, blaspheme the church and defame government officials. Civil laws also restrict unauthorized protests.
It's not only in Spain where concerns are growing over limits on expression. Across Europe, free speech advocates and scholars warn that governments are using old laws and passing new ones to dangerously curtail the right to protest and convey controversial opinions. In response, it's become common for people in France, the United Kingdom, Germany and elsewhere to take to the streets and decry what they see as attacks on their fundamental rights. Anger and tensions over such restrictions have only grown since lockdowns were imposed to control the coronavirus pandemic.
“Even before the pandemic, there were concerns around freedom of expression,” said Marco Perolini, a researcher for Amnesty International, in a telephone interview. “With the pandemic, there have been even more restrictions that have been adopted for public health reasons, but the problem is that many of these restrictions were disproportionate.”
Spain is where the fight over freedom of expression is particularly intense and the Feb. 16 arrest and jailing of Hasél, a 32-year-old Catalan rapper from an upper-class family whose real name is Pablo Rivadulla Duró, was a pivotal moment.
His arrest sparked nights of violent anti-government protests, mostly involving young people, and put more pressure on Spain's left-wing coalition government of Socialists and Unidas Podemos, a party with communist sympathies, to overhaul the criminal code.
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