{"id":435,"date":"2021-08-12T20:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-08-12T20:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cannabisnow.com\/?p=56822"},"modified":"2021-08-12T20:00:00","modified_gmt":"2021-08-12T20:00:00","slug":"last-call-at-barcelonas-cannabis-social-clubs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/?p=435","title":{"rendered":"Last Call at Barcelona\u2019s Cannabis Social Clubs?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Almost every city in the world has cafes\u2014and in 2021, many American cities have legal cannabis\u2014but nowhere else in the world can you find anything resembling the roughly 225 cannabis social clubs in Barcelona.<\/p>\n

Plentiful, relatively simple to find, welcoming to tourists and (mostly) tolerated by authorities, Barcelona\u2019s cannabis \u201casociaciones<\/em>\u201d make the Catalonian capital possibly the best \u201c420 friendly\u201d tourist destination in the world. Some would even argue they are better than Amsterdam\u2019s coffeeshop scene, and certainly more welcoming than the U.S., where social consumption lounges are rare.<\/p>\n

And now that\u2019s all at risk of going away. As El Pais reported<\/a>, in late July, the Catalan High Court ruled that Barcelona\u2019s cannabis clubs can no longer \u201cpromote the consumption, sale or cultivation\u201d of cannabis. The court also threw out regulations passed by local lawmakers in Barcelona\u2014meaning, technically speaking, police could come and shut all 225<\/a> of them down tomorrow, as a stern letter sent recently to all 225 clubs from the Barcelona City Council warned<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Inspectors from city government will sometime soon visit <\/a>all of the city\u2019s asociaciones, \u201cstarting with the ones with the most negative impact and which are geared towards tourists and massive sales, with shutdown orders possible to follow investigations.<\/p>\n

 A strike against cannabis tourism echoes a limited crackdown<\/a> against certain foreign-friendly cannabis cafes in Holland\u2014who risk penalties if they admit foreigners without proof of local residence.<\/a> But in Barcelona, even locals-only  clubs are in jeopardy. \u201cThe majority of associations assume that sooner or later they will be forced to close down,\u201d as Eric Asensio, a spokesman for the Federation of Catalan Cannabis Associations told the Guardian.<\/a><\/p>\n

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That hasn\u2019t happened yet. Inspections have yet to begin, and while fines and imprisonment are on the table for any Barcelona associations who defy authorities,US-style police raids seem unlikely in Spain, where the drug war has taken a much softer tone\u2014and particularly in Barcelona, long a bastion for progressive politics, where the mayor is a radical housing activist<\/a>. (But American readers should remember: in Spain, law enforcement follow national rules rather than a patchwork of local rules.)<\/p>\n

But as lawmakers and lawyers and advocates for associations like CatFac argue the meaning of the court\u2019s ruling, Barcelona\u2019s cannabis clubs are living in a state of anxiety and uncertainty.<\/p>\n

Club owners and staffers interviewed for this article say the future is uncertain\u2014but the trend seems to point towards a corporate takeover of Barcelona\u2019s freewheeling cannabis community.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s complicated, but for now nothing is happening,\u201d said Nico , one of the co-owners of El Club Verde<\/a> in the city\u2019s El Raval neighborhood, not far from the city\u2019s medieval Gothic Quarter, who declined to give his last name.<\/p>\n

Nothing, he added, except for stress and uncertainty.<\/p>\n

Back to illegality<\/h4>\n

In a story that will sound familiar to Californians, for years, Barcelona\u2019s cannabis clubs existed in a sort of armistice zone. They weren\u2019t legal, but as long as nobody was selling or smoking cannabis outside, and as long as clubs didn\u2019t create much of a smell, or allow anyone strolling past to see what was inside\u2014and as long as they didn\u2019t advertise\u2014everything was okay. Both police and citizens liked the fact that the associations reduced street dealing and consumption.<\/p>\n

Though the initial idea was that clubs could be gathering places where people could smoke their own stash, associations quickly started selling cannabis to anyone who paid a membership fee. It\u2019s not entirely clear if this cannabis is their own or if cultivation is controlled by organized crime.<\/p>\n

Some club owners and observers will privately admit that other clubs are fronts for transnational criminal organizations\u2014and indeed, some large clubs were classified as criminal enterprises and forced to close in 2014<\/a> before both the state of Catalonia and the city of Barcelona passed rules regulating the associations.<\/p>\n

In a test case of unintended consequences, Mst clubs felt safe until one association contested the city\u2019s rules around air filtration systems. The complaint reached the Catalan high court, which ruled the city was not free to make laws that violated regional drug statutes, and if Barcelona wanted cannabis clubs, they would have to wait until national lawmakers in Madrid legalized the drug nationally.<\/p>\n

Waiting on Madrid<\/h4>\n

Since the court ruling, the City Council has suggested<\/a> that cannabis clubs will be able to continue, but as gathering spaces only\u2014no sales. CatFac is arguing<\/a> that sales are still allowed, and has launched an effort to try to organize the associations in an effort to stay open and to pass friendly laws in Madrid.<\/p>\n

In an interview, Patricia Amiguet, the president of CatFac, said she hopes this crisis can become a chance at something better\u2014maybe even legalization. \u201cWe\u2019re hoping it can be an opportunity to work together and get regulations in Catalonia,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, there\u2019s the familiar feeling of watching the door and wondering if the next knock is trouble. Will police arrive tomorrow, will the clubs survive until the next Spannabis? Is this it? Nobody can say.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo be honest, nobody really knows what will happen, when, or how,\u201d said Kenzi Riboulet-Zemouli, a drug policy researcher based in Barcelona. \u201cEven authorities and the judiciary would be unable to tell you what will happen. There are many layers of government\/laws\/regulations involved and the enforcement of what has changed will be very complex.\u201d<\/p>\n

For now, he added, \u201cwe are back at the pre-2017 status when there was no [Barcelona] City Hall regulation and no Catalan regulation.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Almost every city in the world has cafes\u2014and in 2021, many American cities have legal cannabis\u2014but nowhere else in the world can you find anything resembling the roughly 225 cannabis social clubs in Barcelona. Plentiful, relatively simple to find, welcoming to tourists and (mostly) tolerated by authorities, Barcelona\u2019s cannabis \u201casociaciones\u201d make the Catalonian capital possibly the best \u201c420 friendly\u201d tourist destination in the world. Some would even argue they are better than Amsterdam\u2019s coffeeshop scene, and certainly more welcoming than the U.S., where social consumption lounges are rare. And now that\u2019s all at risk of going away. As El Pais… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marijuana_information"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=435"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}