A year after coming to power, Spain’s supposedly progressive Socialist Party government is presiding over a social crisis. Its priorities have become clear as it jails a communist rapper, while letting fascists maraud through the country’s streets. ELIAS HADDAD reports.
Since January 2020, the Spanish state has been ruled by a coalition led by the centre-left PSOE, with the social democratic Unidas Podemos as junior partner. Dubbed ‘the most progressive government in Spanish history’ by supporters, it was formed against a background of repeated elections and parliamentary deadlocks, which stretch back to December 2015. To appeal to the electoral left, the coalition promised to reverse the previous conservative government’s policies, including censorship laws and an anti-working class labour reform which fast-tracked redundancies. Not only has the government failed to deliver, but the PSOE has shown its true reactionary colours.
Political censorship
On 16 February 2021, the communist rapper Pablo Rivadulla Duró, known artistically as Pablo Hasel, was imprisoned. His crime? A series of Twitter posts and the lyrics of a rap song. Pablo Hasel was convicted of ‘slander and insults to the Crown and the royal family’ and ‘exalting terrorism’, as he praised the Basque nationalist group ETA and GRAPO, a communist organisation.
Pablo Hasel, from Lleida in Catalonia, was sentenced to nine months in prison, six years disqualification from working in the public sector and a €30,000 (£25,910) fine. Rather than turn himself in, he tried to build support for the struggle against censorship. On 15 February, he locked himself into the University of Lleida with some of his supporters. The following day riot police burst into the building and took him to prison, where fresh charges were brought against him relating to his defence of Catalonia’s political prisoners. For almost 10 years, Pablo Hasel has been regularly harassed by the police, arrested and brought to court. The Spanish state is clearly intent on making an example of him because of his uncompromising communist stance.
On the day of Pablo Hasel’s imprisonment, protests erupted across the country, with riots breaking out in Barcelona and other cities and towns. Mass demonstrations carried on throughout the week. In Lleida, a group of elderly activists chained themselves to the town hall building demanding an end to repression. After five days, there had been 102 arrests, and many were injured by a brutal police crackdown; one protester lost an eye to a rubber bullet. In a video, riot-gear police can be seen surrounding a group of protesters in Barcelona, and then charging at them with batons and shields.
While many of those who flocked to the streets do not share Pablo Hasel’s political views, they understood that this blatant state attack on freedom of expression and of thought could not go unchallenged.
The Catalan rapper has consistently defended his alleged ‘disrespect’ for the monarchy on the grounds that he was simply pointing out objective facts. For example, in his lyrics he has accused the Spanish royal family of corruption and supporting atrocities by Gulf monarchies – a position borne out when in August 2020 retired king Juan Carlos fled to the United Arab Emirates, after an array of allegations of corruption fell upon him. Pablo Hasel points out that, while censorship is widely used against anti-fascists, reactionaries who demand the bombing of, for example ‘Catalan people, homosexuals or migrants’ are allowed full freedom of expression.
Spanish ‘progressive government’ protects fascist legacy
The legacy of the fascist dictatorship, which only ended with the death of Francisco Franco in 1975, and the smooth transition to a parliamentary monarchy, still lingers. Far from being challenged by either progressive or conservative governments, it still provides the context for everything they do.
On 13 February, around 300 fascists marched on the streets of Madrid to commemorate the ‘Blue Division’, a military unit that joined Nazi Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union in World War II. A speaker at the Nazi rally said: ‘the enemy is always the same, even with different masks: the Jew. The Jew is guilty, and that is why the Blue Division fought’. This hate speech festival was protected by the police. On that same weekend, in Linares, a town in Andalucia, two off-duty police officers beat a man unconscious in a café, punching his 14-year-old daughter in the face when she tried to intervene. The case sparked local uproar. In the protests that followed, the police used live ammunition, wounding two protesters.
Two days earlier, on Spanish public television, on an item about Princess Leonor going to study abroad, the news banner read: ‘Leonor leaves Spain, like her grandad’ (a reference to Juan Carlos absconding to the United Arab Emirates to avoid charges of corruption). The banner was on screen for less than two minutes, but the producer who wrote it was immediately fired and the TV station released a grovelling statement reiterating its commitment to state institutions, and in particular the Crown.
Hopes that censorship laws would be repealed by a ‘progressive government’, or that overt fascists in the police, military and courts would be removed from their posts, have vanished.
Spain’s coronavirus crisis
The Spanish state has been one of the European countries worst hit by the Covid-19 pandemic. The government has failed to deliver, either from a public health approach or in mitigating the economic effects, despite declaring a state of emergency and reinforcing its own executive powers. By the end of 2020, unemployment stood at 16.2%, while youth unemployment had risen to 43.9%. Many workers, especially the young, face underemployment, and short-term or informal contracts. The Spanish housing crisis is consequently intensifying, while PSOE has made it clear that it considers housing a ‘market good’, not a right. A whole generation has no future in the current system, and its frustration will flame more protests.
We stand in solidarity with Pablo Hasel and all those fighting against political censorship and repression in the Spanish state! Llibertat Pablo Hasel!
FIGHT RACISM! FIGHT IMPERIALISM! 281 April/May 2021
