Spanish gag law: The original sin and ongoing penance

The arrest of a famous rapper is yet another sign of increasingly shrinking spaces for free expression in Spain.

Since mid-February, there have been protests in a number of Spanish cities against the jailing of Pablo Hasél, a rapper of Catalan descent. Hasél was sent to prison after being found guilty of insulting the Spanish monarchy and police, as well as “glorifying terrorism” for expressing support for now-disbanded “terrorist groups” in a series of songs and tweets. His case has become a rallying cry for the decade-long struggle against the Spanish government’s infringement on the right to free speech and freedom of expression. Over the past 10 years, there has been significant backsliding on civil rights and democratic standards in Spain, as in other European countries. Too often, Spanish institutions have treated street protests and other forms of dissent not as an expression of a guaranteed right under international and European Union law, but as a threat to society. In 2011, several years after the onset of the global financial downturn, Spanish people took to the streets to protest against what they saw as a massive failure of the government to handle the economic crisis. The demonstrations spread across the country and came to be known as the Indignados movement. The police responded with excessive use of force, beating protesters, pepper-spraying them and shooting rubber bullets, thus curbing the right to peaceful assembly.