Mallorca rapper returns having fled Spain to avoid prison

At the airport on Sunday morning. | Última hora

Andrew EdePalma29/10/2023 11:40

Josep Miquel Arenas, better known as Valtonyc, was greeted at Palma Airport on Sunday morning by around fifty people - family and friends.

The rapper fled Spain in May 2018, having been sentenced to three and a half years for offences related to his lyrics. At the airport he said: "These six years of fighting for freedom of expression have been worth it." His exile in Belgium has been tough, "but has made me grow as a person and professionally". "The past is something to learn from, not to regret. I have made many mistakes but today I have my friends, and my family looks at me with pride."

He observed that he has only been able to return to Mallorca because the statute of limitations has expired: "Not because Spain has been self-critical and has accepted that it is making a mistake by condemning singers and has a failure in its democratic system in terms of freedom of expression."

He said that he intends to return to Belgium and to live there. Over the past years he has taken a master's degree in software engineering, so his idea is to live in Belgium, "but now with freedom of movement". He longs to be able to travel in Europe and the rest of the world because the process against him began when he was 18 and his passport was withdrawn. "I have to make up for these ten lost years."