The “royal” family of Spain can sleep easily now that a rapper who showed disrespect for them has been sentenced to three and a half years in prison.
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Two Bourbon “kings”
The supreme court of Spain has ruled that the Rapper Josep Miquel Arenas Beltrán is guilty of lèse-majesté, as well as slander and support for terrorism.
According to the Independent, in his rapping Mr Arenas Beltrán “criticises the Spanish monarchy over their relations with the Saudi royal family, their foreign policy, and their spending”. He sang “The situation worries me quite a bit, how to support two families: mine, and the royal one.”
In other lyrics Arenas Beltrán calls for death for politicians and members of the monarchy. But the Spanish authorities were not content with with the charge of “glorification of terrorism” for these threats. They added the charges of slander and lèse-majesté, apparently equating contempt for monarchy with terrorism.
The mayor of Barcelona has expressed support for Beltrán’s right to freedom of speech, saying that the rapper had been singing about “Bourbon thieves”, that is the Spanish monarchy.