Recently, the TV channel ARTE released a documentary on the situation of artists in Spain. Since the "Citizen Protection Law" came into force in 2015, popularly known as the Muzzling Law, freedom of expression has been increasingly restricted, especially in the field of culture.
In the half-hour long reportage, besides the performance artist Abel Azcona, who was accused for his criticism of paedophilia crimes in the Catholic Church and had to retreat to Portugal, the struggle of the revolutionary rapper Pablo Hasél is shown with some footage of the resistance when he was arrested. Pablo Hasél had been sentenced to prison in February for "insulting the monarchy and glorifying terrorism", after which fierce mass struggles broke out in several cities in Spain.
The reportage shows how the state tolerates and supports various extreme-reactionary organisations in their hunt against progressive artists, such as the "Association of Christian Lawyers", or the "Francisco Franco Foundation", which has been supported by the state for years and whose aim is to honour Spanish fascism. These reactionary organisations do some of the work that the state would otherwise only get its fingers even dirtier with. In this light, the artists are hailed, sometimes for years, with a huge amount of lawsuits, all written by the same reactionary heaps. The bureaucracy of the Spanish judicial system lets the waves of lawsuits pass like this, which makes defending oneself part of the daily business for some artists.
It should be noted, however, that there is one point in the report that is misunderstood. Pablo Hasel's lawyer and also Azcona claim, with regard to the defence against lawsuits by fascists, that the Spanish state's treatment of fascists would be completely unthinkable in a country like Germany. They don‘t see that states such as the FRG collaborate in the building of a fascist mass movement, which is made clear not least by the never-ending, permanent exposure of fascist structures in the police and the Bundeswehr. Keeping this in mind, just like the already ongoing reduction of basic democratic rights in the FRG, it is advisable to watch the reportage to get a view on how a part of the petty-bourgeois intelligence radicalises.
The reportage gives a brief, concentrated overview of the situation of Pablo Hasél. It is the duty of revolutionaries to support the artists of the people in their struggle and to denounce the repression by the bourgeois state that dares to prosecute an artist for criticising fascists, genociders, etc.
Freedom for Pablo Hasél!
Freedom for all political prisoners!
