Rapper’s arrest triggers widespread protests and debate over free speech in

As debates over free speech and accusations of “cancel culture” continue to simmer across the world, the issue last week emerged as a fierce rallying cry on the streets of Spain.

A provocative Spanish rapper became an unlikely figurehead for widespread protests and galvanized a debate about freedom of expression in the European country.

Pablo Hasél’s tweets and lyrics came back to haunt him, as the anti-establishment musician was imprisoned last Tuesday on charges of insulting Spain’s monarchy and glorifying terrorism, sparking night upon night of protests in major cities across the country, some of which have turned violent.

Hasél — whose full name is Pablo Rivadulla Duró — missed a deadline earlier this month to surrender to police to serve a nine-month jail term handed down in 2018, when he was convicted over lyrics and tweets that compared Spanish judges to Nazis and called former King Juan Carlos a mafia boss. He also made references to the Basque separatist paramilitary group known as ETA, which sought independence from Spain.

Instead, Hasél barricaded himself in a university in the Catalan city of Lleida before he was eventually arrested and jailed.

“Tomorrow it could be you,” he tweeted before he was imprisoned and after retweeting the lyrics that he was convicted for.

“We cannot allow them to dictate to us what to say, what to feel and what to do,” he added.

His supporters and those who decry the perceived limits on free speech took to the streets of cities including the capital, Madrid; Valencia; and Catalonia’s regional capital, Barcelona, where thousands chanted, “Freedom for Pablo Hasél,” and, “No more police violence.”

As tensions flared Saturday, police clashed with members of fringe groups who set up street barricades and smashed storefront windows in downtown Barcelona.

Pepe Ivorra García, 18, a student in the city who joined the protests Thursday night, said he came out to peacefully support Hasél and what he called an “attack” on democratic freedoms that are “part of the backbone” of the Spanish Constitution.

“I’m neither Catalan, nor pro-independence but I am a democrat,” García told NBC News. “I humbly consider it to be an embarrassment and a democratic anomaly that in a European country in the 21st century there are prisoners in jail for their ideas.”

Hasél became an unlikely free speech champion after his case drew attention to Spain’s 2015 Public Security Law. Enacted by a previous, conservative-led government, the law prevents insults toward religion, the monarchy and the glorification of banned armed groups such as ETA.

More than 200 artists, including film director Pedro Almodóvar and actor Javier Bardem, signed an open letter last week in solidarity with Hasél.

Human rights organization Amnesty International Spain also condemned the rapper’s imprisonment as a “disproportionate restriction on his freedom of expression.”

The so-called 2015 “gag…