Barcelona | Be it to symbolize freedom of expression in Spain, rapper Pablo Hasel, who was serving a prison sentence for tweets attacking the monarchy and the police, was jailed on Tuesday.

According to images of their arrests broadcast by Spanish television, they will never arrest us despite all the repression, they will never lynch us despite all the repression.

“It is the fascist state that is stopping me. Death for the Fascist State! “, He announced while still looking at the cameras, when entering a vehicle of” Mosos d’Squadra “, the Catalan Regional Police evacuated him from the University of Lérida in Catalonia, where he was barricaded by dozens of supporters since Monday. Want to stop his arrest.

According to a police spokesperson, the rapper was held in the Lleida prison shortly after prison.

Pablo Hassell – real name Pablo Rivadulla Duro – will begin voluntarily going to prison by Friday evening and serving a nine-month sentence imposed on him by Spanish courts.

Found guilty of apologizing for terrorism, as well as for insults and slander against the crown and the state, he was blamed for tweets in which he specifically referred Spanish law enforcement agencies as “mercenaries” Had described. He was accused of torture and murder. And also attacked the monarchy.

“The 32-year-old Catalan rapper, who has previously pleaded guilty in the past, told AFP via telephone,” He will face my kidnapping and will show the state his real face. Friday. But was never imprisoned.

“Sword power”

Several tense performances in support of Pablo Hasle have taken place in Madrid and Barcelona in recent weeks, while more than 200 celebrities from the Spanish-speaking cultural world, including director Pedro Almodovar and actor Javier Bardem, have signed their tribune favors. .

The signatories specifically confirmed that Pablo Hussle’s sentence constituted the “sword of Dumocles” above all artists and accused Spain of acting like “Turkey or Morocco”.

The case had become a real thorn in the side of Pedro Sánchez’s leftist government, especially during the Catalan elections last Sunday.

Executive spokesman Maria Jesús Montero last week recognized the “lack of proportionality” in the sentence imposed on the rapper.

While on the defensive, the government also promised “a reform” so that “verbal excesses occurring in the context of artistic, cultural or intellectual events” would no longer fall under criminal law and result in prison sentences.

To avoid a verdict on the sentence, government number two of Carmen Calvo on Tuesday defended “reasonable tolerance for a mature democracy like ours” in the area of ​​freedom of expression.

Radical leftist Podemos, a socialist partner in government, strongly condemned the rapper’s arrest on Tuesday.

“All those who consider themselves progressive and ashamed of themselves for ocratic absolute democratic normalcy” (of Spain). Will they close their eyes? If we do not want to recognize the current democratic shortcomings, there is no progress.

This was an illusion for highly controversial comments by its leader and vice-president of government Pablo Iglesias, who said last week that “there was no absolute political and democratic normalcy in Spain”.

These comments caused panic among all right-wing opposition parties, but there is also great uneasiness within Pedro Sanchez’s Socialist Party.

The case of Pablo Hazel recalls another Spanish rapper, Valtonić. The latter had gone into exile in Belgium in May 2018, after being sentenced to three and a half years in prison in Spain, confirmed to have “apologized for terrorism” and “insulted the Crown”.

In an interview with AFP on Tuesday, Waltonek assured Pablo Hasel to feel “shame” and “anger” in the imprisonment “for what the cast did: provoke”.