Looting broke out as police and demonstrators in Barcelona clashed for a fifth night on Saturday, with thousands hitting the streets across Spain in protest against the jailing of a controversial rapper. Angry demonstrations first erupted on Tuesday after police detained Pablo Hasel, 32, and took him to jail to start serving a nine-month sentence in a highly contentious free-speech case.
Since then, protesters have turned out every night, clashing with police in disturbances which began in Hasel’s home region of Catalonia, but have since spread to Madrid and beyond.
Ahead of the rallies, police were out en masse to head off any of the violence that has marred earlier protests, with dozens of police vans lining the streets of Madrid and Barcelona. Several thousand demonstrators began gathering at about 7pm in Barcelona, and clashes broke out as they started marching toward the police headquarters.
Photo: Reuters
Protesters hurled bottles, cans and firecrackers at police, who charged at them as smoke poured into the air from burning barricades, an Agence France Presse correspondent said.
Others smashed their way into shops along Barcelona’s glitzy Passeig de Gracia shopping avenue, looting stores such as Nike, Versace, Tommy Hilfiger, Hugo Boss and Diesel. They also attacked the Barcelona stock exchange building and torched several motorbikes.
The Mossos d’Esquadra regional police said that nine people had been arrested at demonstrations across Catalonia, six of them in Barcelona, and the region’s emergency services said six people had been injured, two in Barcelona.
In Madrid, about 400 people gathered under a heavy police presence in the city center, chanting and clapping as curious shoppers stopped to watch.
“Free Pablo Hasel!” they yelled as a helicopter flew overhead and at least 17 police vans could be seen lined up along Gran Via, Madrid’s busiest shopping street.
Earlier several hundreds had gathered in the southern cities of Malaga, Cordoba and Seville, local media reported, with another 100 protesters gathering in the northern city of Santander and a similar number in Logrono.
So far, more than 100 people have been arrested in the protests over Hasel, and scores more injured in the clashes, among them many police officers and a young woman who lost an eye after being hit by a foam round fired by police.
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