A police van was torched and looting broke out on Saturday as police and protesters clashed within the newest demonstration in Barcelona, 11 days after the jailing of a Spanish rapper in a extremely contentious free speech case.
Spain has been rocked by offended protests since police jailed rapper Pablo Hasel on February 16 for 9 months over tweets through which he glorified terrorist assaults, likened former king Juan Carlos I to a mafia boss and accused police of killing demonstrators and migrants.
Since his jailing, protesters have turned out most nights, with the demonstrations broadening to incorporate different social causes, such because the EU’s unemployment price and rising hire costs.
A number of hundred individuals demonstrated on Saturday in Barcelona, the capital of Hasel’s residence area of Catalonia, in keeping with an AFP journalist.
However within the night the protest degenerated into acts of vandalism and the looting of financial institution branches, one in all which was set on hearth, in keeping with Catalan police.
The Catalan police condemned “hooded rioters” who attacked “retailers, and notably banks”, including that one in all their police vans had been torched, together with many garbage bins.
Round 10 individuals have been arrested in the course of the clashes, one in all whom was “concerned in torching the van”, the police mentioned.
Greater than 110 protesters have been arrested because the arrest of 32-year-old Hasel, which sparked protests in cities throughout Spain, with probably the most pronounced in Catalonia.
It has additionally provoked a debate about freedom of expression, and pushed a rift between Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s Socialists its junior coalition companion the hard-left Podemos, which has supported the protests.
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