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      Rapper’s Arrest Awakens Rage in Spanish Youth Chafing in Pandemic

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeWatch: ‘WandaVision’Travel: More SustainablyFreeze: Homemade TreatsCheck Out: Podcasters’ Favorite PodcastsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyRapper’s Arrest Awakens Rage in Spanish Youth Chafing in PandemicNearly two weeks of sometimes violent demonstrations have turned into a collective outcry from young adults who see bleak futures and precious time lost to lockdowns.Protesters marching in support of Pablo Hasél, a controversial Spanish rapper, in Barcelona this week. Credit…Felipe Dana/Associated PressFeb. 27, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETLeer en españolBARCELONA — It had all the markings of a free speech showdown: Pablo Hasél, a controversial Spanish rapper, had barricaded himself on a university campus to avoid a nine-month jail sentence on charges that he had glorified terrorism and denigrated the monarchy. While students surrounded him, police in riot gear moved in; Mr. Hasél raised his fist in defiance as he was taken away.But Oriol Pi, a 21-year-old in Barcelona, saw something more as he watched the events unfold last week on Twitter. He thought of the job he had as an events manager before the pandemic, and how he was laid off after the lockdowns. He thought of the curfew and the mask mandates that he felt were unnecessary for young people. He thought of how his parents’ generation had faced nothing like it.And he thought it was time for Spain’s youth to take to the streets.“My mother thinks this is about Pablo Hasél, but it’s not just that,” said Mr. Pi, who joined the protests that broke out in Barcelona last week. “Everything just exploded. It’s a whole collection of so many things which you have to understand.”“Everything just exploded. It’s a whole collection of so many things which you have to understand,” said Oriol Pi, 21, of the youth demonstrations taking place across Spain. Credit…Samuel Aranda for The New York TimesFor nine nights, this seaside city’s streets, long quiet from pandemic curfews, have erupted in sometimes violent demonstrations that have spread to Madrid and other Spanish hubs. What began as a protest over Mr. Hasél’s prosecution has become a collective outcry by a generation that sees not just a lost future for itself, but also a present that has been robbed, years and experiences it will never get back, even when the pandemic is gone.The frustration of young people stemming from the pandemic is not limited to Spain alone. Across Europe, university life has been deeply curtailed or turned on its head by the limitations of virtual classes.Social isolation is as endemic as the contagion itself. Anxiety and depression have reached alarming rates among young people nearly everywhere, mental health experts and studies have found. The police and mostly young protesters have also clashed in other parts of Europe, including last month in Amsterdam.“It’s not the same now for a person who is 60 — or a 50-year-old with life experience and everything completely organized — as it is for a person who is 18 now and has the feeling that every hour they lose to this pandemic, it’s like losing their entire life,” said Enric Juliana, an opinion columnist with La Vanguardia, Barcelona’s leading newspaper.Barcelona was once a city of music festivals on the beach and all-night bars, leaving few better places in Europe to be young. But the crisis, which devastated tourism and shrank the national economy by 11 percent last year, was a catastrophe for Spain’s young adults.Police officers during clashes following a protest condemning the arrest of Mr. Hasél in Barcelona on Tuesday.Credit…Emilio Morenatti/Associated PressIt is an instance of déjà vu for those who also lived through the financial crisis of 2008, which took one of its heaviest tolls in Spain. Like then, young people have had to move back into the homes of their parents, with entry-level jobs being among the first to vanish.But unlike past economic downturns, the pandemic cut much deeper. It hit at a time when unemployment for people under age 25 was already high in Spain at 30 percent. Now 40 percent of Spain’s youth are unemployed, the highest rate in Europe, according to European Union statistics.For someone like Mr. Pi, the arrest of the rapper Mr. Hasél, and his rage-against-the-machine defiance, has become a symbol of the frustration of Spain’s young people.“I loved that the man left with his fist in the air,” said Mr. Pi, who said he hadn’t heard of the rapper before Spain brought charges against him. “It’s about fighting for your freedom, and he did it to the very last minute.”The case of Mr. Hasél, whose real name is Pablo Rivadulla Duró, is also igniting a debate about free speech and Spain’s efforts to limit it.The authorities charged Mr. Hasél under a law that allows for prison sentences for certain kinds of incendiary statements. Mr. Hasél, known as a provocateur as much as a rapper, had accused the Spanish police of brutality, compared judges to Nazis and even celebrated ETA, a Basque separatist group that folded two years ago after decades of bloody terrorist campaigns that left around 850 people dead.In 2018, a Spanish court sentenced him to two years in prison, though that was later reduced to nine months. The prosecution focused on his Twitter posts and a song he had written about former King Juan Carlos, whom Mr. Hasél had called a “Mafioso,” among other insults. (The former king abdicated in 2014, and decamped Spain entirely last summer for the United Arab Emirates amid a corruption scandal.)“What he’s said at trial is that they put him in prison for saying the truth, because what he says about the king, aside from all the insults, is exactly what happened,” said Fèlix Colomer, a 27-year-old documentary filmmaker who got to know Mr. Hasél while exploring a project about his trial.Fèlix Colomer and his partner, Valeria, at their home in Barcelona on Friday. On some nights, Mr. Colomer has led the Barcelona protests.Credit…Samuel Aranda for The New York TimesMr. Colomer, who on certain nights has led the Barcelona protesters, noted that others have been prosecuted in Spain for social media comments, a troubling sign for Spain’s democracy, in his view. A Spanish rapper known as Valtònyc fled to Belgium in 2018 after getting a prison sentence for his lyrics that a court found glorified terrorism and insulted the monarchy — charges similar to those Mr. Hasél faces.Yet some feel Mr. Hasél crossed a line in his lyrics. José Ignacio Torreblanca, a political science professor at the National Distance Education University in Madrid, said while the law’s use troubled him, Mr. Hasél was not the right figure to build a youth movement around.“He’s no Joan Baez, he’s actively justifying and promoting violence. This is clear in his songs. He says things like, ‘I wish a bomb explodes under your car,’” said Mr. Torreblanca, referring to a song by Mr. Hasél that called for the assassination of a Basque government official and another that said a mayor in Catalonia “deserved a bullet.”Amid public pressure that was growing even before the protests, the Justice Ministry said on Monday that it planned to change the country’s criminal code to reduce sentences related to the kinds of speech violations for which Mr. Hasél was sentenced.But for Nahuel Pérez, a 23-year-old who works in Barcelona taking care of the mentally disabled, freedom for Mr. Hasél is only the start of his concerns.Since arriving in Barcelona five years ago from his hometown on the resort island of Ibiza, Mr. Pérez said, he hasn’t found a job with a salary high enough to cover the cost of living. To save money on rent, he recently moved into an apartment with four other roommates. The close quarters meant social distancing was impossible.Nahuel Pérez, left, with his roommates in their apartment in Barcelona on Friday. “The youth of this country are in a pretty deplorable state,” Mr. Pérez said.Credit…Samuel Aranda for The New York Times“The youth of this country are in a pretty deplorable state,” he said.After Mr. Hasél was arrested at the university, Mr. Pi, who had seen the news on Twitter, began to see people announcing protests on the messaging app Telegram. He told his mother he wanted to go to the demonstrations, but she didn’t seem to quite understand why.“I’m not going to go look for you at the police station,” is what she told him, Mr. Pi said.He thought about what it must have been like for his mother at his age.There was no pandemic. Spain was booming. She was a teacher and married in her 20s to another professional, Mr. Pi’s father. The two found a house and raised a family.Mr. Pi, by contrast, is an adult still living with his mother.“Our parents got all the good fruit and here’s what we’re facing: There’s no fruit in the tree anymore, because they took the best of it,” said Mr. Pi. “Everything that was the good life, the best of Spain — there’s none of that left for us.”When he’s not at the protests, Mr. Pi spends his days working as a hall monitor in a nearby school that operates a mix of online and socially distanced in-person classes.It’s not the career he wanted — not a career at all, he says — but it pays the bills, and lets him talk to high school students to get their outlook on the situation in Spain.He doesn’t mince words about what lies ahead for them.“These are the people who will be me in ten years,” he said. “I think they’re hearing something that no one has ever told them. I would have listened if someone had come to me when I was 12 and said: ‘Listen, you’re going to have to struggle for your future.’”Roser Toll Pifarré contributed reporting from Barcelona, and Raphael Minder from Madrid.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      in Theater

      Exploring Race and Resistance for Young Audiences

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeMake: BirriaExplore: ‘Bridgerton’ StyleParent: With ImprovRead: Joyce Carol OatesAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCritic’s NotebookExploring Race and Resistance for Young AudiencesA Harriet Tubman monologue, an animated “Sit-In” and a toy theater short about medical inequity deliver useful messages through varied mediums.Janet (center) intends to stage a protest over climate change in the animated “Sit-In.”Credit…via Alliance TheaterFeb. 9, 2021How can you build a hopeful future without first learning from the painful past?This question, which has arisen repeatedly over the last year, resonates in three new streaming theater productions for young people. Directed toward audiences 9 and older, each uses African-American history to reflect on current issues, including the Black Lives Matter movement, climate change and the coronavirus pandemic. Frequently unsparing in detail — and even in language — these works should inspire discussions well beyond Black History Month.“A Tribe Called Tubman,” from TheaterWorksUSA, is the most fully realized, incisive and moving of the shows, both because of its length — 42 minutes — and its reliance on an actor’s presence. (The other productions feature animation or puppetry.) Available indefinitely on TWUSA.TV, a platform that the company developed for its own work and that of other family-theater producers, the play stars Jada Suzanne Dixon as a serene and commanding Harriet Tubman, the escaped slave who became a leader of the Underground Railroad. (You must wait until the end to discover the identity of the tribe in the title.)Jada Suzanne Dixon as the title character in Idris Goodwin’s “A Tribe Called Tubman.”Credit…via TheaterWorksUSACasually dressed in contemporary clothes, Dixon spends much of her time in a simple black chair. But she doesn’t need to stride the stage. Written and directed by Idris Goodwin, the play refuses to enshrine Tubman as a towering heroine of near-mythical powers. “What if I was just as ordinary as anyone else?” she asks.Speaking conversationally and occasionally singing, she relates her experiences, which were far from ordinary. But they were human, and in portraying her as a flesh-and-blood woman, the script demonstrates that it is courageous people, not gods, who bring about social change.The show does, however, have a mystical side. Tubman says she has died twice and will die again. The first time was when her skull was struck by a metal bar thrown by an overseer trying to stop a fleeing slave. (Imitating that white man’s rage, she shouts the ugliest of racial slurs.) The second occasion was when she succumbed to pneumonia in 1913. And why is she here again?“The knee is still on our necks,” says Tubman, who was often called Moses. Having advised young audiences on how to pursue justice, she adds, “Maybe what I am now is that burning bush.”The Alliance Theater decided to animate Pearl Cleage’s “Sit-In” script when live performance became impossible.Credit…via Alliance TheaterAnother incendiary phrase — “Our house is on fire” — propels “Sit-In,” produced by Alliance Theater in Atlanta. This statement refers to global warming rather than civil rights, although Janet (Eden Luse), an 11-year-old African-American girl, soon learns how the struggles surrounding these issues are related.Janet finds herself in conflict with her best friends, Mary Beth (Bella Fraker) and Consuelo (Lena Castro), after she tells them she can’t be part of their singing trio at the talent show because she intends to stage a school sit-in about climate change. Consuelo retaliates by saying she won’t sing with Janet at an upcoming rally.Torn, and facing opposition at home and at school — she’s threatened with expulsion — Janet resolves her dilemma only after talking to her grandfather (L Warren Young), who tells her of his own participation in the Atlanta Student Movement in 1960.Inspired by “Sit-In: How Four Friends Stood Up by Sitting Down,” a picture book created by the married couple Andrea Davis Pinkney and Brian Pinkney, the play artfully transforms a true story of young Black men 60 years ago into a dramatic narrative about three contemporary girls of varying ethnicities.Faced with the Covid lockdown, the playwright Pearl Cleage and the director Mark Valdez worked with Alliance and the Palette Group to turn the production into a 33-minute animated film. The result incorporates a rich soundtrack (by Eugene H. Russell IV) and a vivid interplay of images, including gritty footage of the real 1960s lunch counter sit-ins.Streaming on Alliance’s website and on TWUSA.TV through June 30, “Sit-In” educates and entertains, though I wish it had been longer. The play illustrates that protest carries risks, but ends before you learn the consequences of the 21st-century student activism it depicts.The set and characters in “Diamond’s Dream,” like this image inside a train car, are constructed from detailed cutouts.Credit…via Chicago Children’s TheaterThe visually mesmerizing “Diamond’s Dream,” presented by Chicago Children’s Theater, is even shorter — just under 18 minutes. Created by Jerrell L. Henderson (who also directed) and Caitlin McLeod (who designed it), this toy theater production features a set and characters constructed from meticulously detailed cutouts. The scrolling painterly backdrops and Daniel Ison’s soundtrack enhance the feeling that you’re inside an L train in Chicago.The play, which streams free on the company’s YouTube channel, CCTv, through June 22, unfolds in the present day, when Diamond (Davu Smith), an African-American youth wearing a surgical mask, is on his way to visit his dying grandmother. (Whether she has Covid-19 is unclear.) After dozing in his empty train car, he suddenly encounters a Black girl (Amira Danan), who tells him she’s a lost spirit who can’t recall her identity. She remembers only how “the colored people got hit by the flu, the big flu” and how “an angry mob” arrived as she was dying.The “big flu” is the 1918 pandemic, and the “angry mob” refers to attacks by white rioters during what is now known as the Red Summer of 1919, but children are unlikely to grasp this unless they consult an accompanying online study guide. And although the production offers an emotional resolution, it still feels like only a tantalizing taste of what deserved to be a bigger project. Parents and teachers will have to help young viewers investigate the subjects — racial inequities in housing and health care, the disproportionate effects of disease on minorities — that “Diamond’s Dream” raises yet doesn’t fully explore.What can’t be ignored is that these historical struggles continue. Or, as Harriet Tubman puts it in Goodwin’s play, “The scars are still fresh.”A Tribe Called TubmanOn TWUSA.TVSit-InThrough June 30; alliancetheatre.orgDiamond’s DreamOn YouTube through June 22; chicagochildrenstheatre.orgAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More