Thousands of people took to the streets of Barcelona in Spain on Tuesday evening demanding the release of a rapper arrested by police after being sentenced on charges of glorifying terrorism and insulting royalty.

Police stormed Lleida University in northeastern Spain earlier in the day and arrested Pablo Hasel who had barricaded himself in, missing a deadline last Friday night to surrender to police to serve a nine-month jail term handed down in 2018. 

At issue were his lyrics and a series of tweets that included references to the Basque separatist paramilitary group ETA, compared Spanish judges to Nazis, called former king Juan Carlos a mafia boss and accused police of torturing and killing demonstrators and migrants.

The sentence caused uproar in Spain and led the government to announce it would make free speech laws less restrictive. After Hasel's arrest, Deputy Prime Minister Carmen Calvo reiterated the plans to reform the law and told reporters that jailing people over matters of freedom of speech should not happen in a democracy.

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A group of Hasel's supporters clashed with police on Tuesday morning, throwing chairs and emptying fire extinguishers, before officers carrying guns and wearing protective headgear broke through several barricades and apprehended the rapper.

"They will never make us give in, despite the repression," shouted Hasel, 32, with his fist raised as he was escorted out of the building. "Victory will be ours ... There will be no forgetting and no forgiving," he said. Adding: "It is the fascist state that is arresting me. Death to the fascist state!"

Hasel is known for his left-wing views, but his case has become a cause celebre among campaigners who say that prosecuting him is a dangerous assault on free speech. 

Protesters clash with police

Hours after his arrest, thousands of protesters hit the streets in at least three of the Catalonia region's cities, with around 1,700 people marching in central Barcelona waving banners and placards reading "Free Pablo." 

But as the demonstration began to disperse, a handful of protesters began setting fire to large rubbish bins, looting shops and hurling stones and other objects at police, who charged at them and sometimes used batons and foam projectiles.

Similar incidents took place in Lleida where the rapper was arrested, as well as in the northern city of Girona, while footage on Twitter showed a stand-off between a handful of police and protesters in the eastern city of Valencia. 

Mossos d'Esquadra, the Catalan regional police, said on Twitter that protesters burned motorbikes and bins, creating barricades and blocking streets in Barcelona and that 14 people had been arrested.

Supporters speak out against 'unjust' jail sentence

More than 200 artists, including film director Pedro Almodovar, actor Javier Bardem and singer Joan Manuel Serrat, signed a petition opposing Hasel's jail sentence.

Rights groups including Amnesty International also denounced the sentence, calling it "unjust and disproportionate."

"Pablo Hasel's imprisonment is an excessive and disproportionate restriction on his freedom of expression, but he is not alone in suffering the consequences of unjust laws," the non-governmental organization wrote on Twitter. 

Far-left party Podemos, the junior partner in Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez's minority coalition government, spoke out criticizing Hasel's arrest.

"All those who consider themselves progressives and boast of [Spain's] 'full democratic normality' should be ashamed," the party tweeted. "There is no progress if we refuse to recognize our existing democratic shortcomings," it added.

Spain's leftist government said last week in response to the case that it would reduce the penalty for "crimes of expression," such as the glorification of terrorism, insults to the crown and offenses against religious sensibilities in the context of artistic, cultural or intellectual activities.

The government said it would introduce milder penalties, target only actions that pose a risk to public order or might provoke violence and would uphold tolerance for artistic, cultural and intellectual forms of expression.