Spain\u2019s foremost cannabis activist is a 76-year-old woman in the southern province of M\u00e1laga who has been asserting her right to home cultivation for over a generation now. Fernanda de la Figuera \u2014 ubiquitously known as Abuela Marijuana, or Grandma Marijuana \u2014 has been busted before, and won a landmark ruling in her favor from the Spanish courts.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In spite of this, she was busted again, and this time convicted and sentenced. But now she says she will appeal to the European Union\u2019s highest judicial body.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
On Jan. 30, a M\u00e1laga judge\u00a0convicted<\/a>\u00a0de la Figuera of drug trafficking, on the basis of a 2014 raid on her home in the small town of Alhaur\u00edn el Grande by a contingent of the Civil Guards, Spain\u2019s militarized national police force. The raid turned up her backyard garden of some 180 cannabis plants.<\/p>\n Prosecutors asked for four years\u2019 imprisonment. The judge gave a sentence of just nine months \u2014 which is below the\u00a0two-year threshold for mandatory prison time<\/a>. This means she could likely receive a suspended sentence and escape actually going to jail, if she confesses to her \u201ccrime\u201d and commits no second offense during the nine months.<\/p>\n But de la Figuera isn\u2019t having it. She insists she was growing for her own personal use, and her collective of medical users, and that she has the right to do so \u2014 already upheld by the Spanish courts. She\u00a0told local media<\/a>\u00a0that she will now take her case to a higher authority \u2014 the\u00a0European Court of Human Rights<\/a>,\u00a0in Strasbourg, France.<\/p>\n De la Figuera considers herself the\u00a0\u201cap\u00f3stol del autocultivo\u201d\u00a0<\/em>\u2014 the apostle of homegrown. She smoked cannabis for the first time in Paris in the \u201960s, and found that it relieved the epilepsy and rheumatism she had been struggling with since childhood. She has been growing the plant since 1973, and won her ground-breaking legal victory recognizing her right to do so more than 20 years later.<\/p>\n In 1995, her same home in Alhaur\u00edn el Grande was raided, and she was brought up on cultivation charges. But the judge dismissed the charges on individual liberty grounds. Abuela Marijuana boasted that she\u2019d become the first legal cannabis cultivator in Spain.<\/p>\n The quantity in the case was considerably lesser than the 180 plants in the 2014 bust. But in the intervening years, she had founded Mar\u00edasXMar\u00eda (Marias for Maria), an \u201cassociation\u201d of women from across Spain\u2019s southern Andalusia region suffering from arthritis, fibromyalgia and other ailments they treat with cannabis. She insisted that her cultivation was \u201ctherapeutic work,\u201d for members of the association.\u00a0<\/p>\n And in 2015, Spain\u00a0passed a law<\/a>\u00a0expanding on its 1983 decriminalization of cannabis, allowing personal cultivation \u2014 provided it is hidden from public view. However, it is uncertain this could apply in de la Figuera\u2019s case, both because it would have to be retroactive and because of the quantities involved. Additionally, it is unclear if backyard cultivation clearly counts as hidden from the public.\u00a0<\/p>\n De la Figuera considers the charge against her transparently bogus. \u201cThe judge in my town knows that all my life I\u2019ve made my living in the real estate market, and that I don\u2019t dedicate myself to selling marijuana,\u201d she told Andalusia\u2019s\u00a0El Diario<\/a>\u00a0newspaper. \u201cThis is not my interest, but to make known this wonderful substance, and how good it is for the health of many people.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The 2015 law was designed to protect Spain\u2019s cannabis associations. But an unfavorable ruling of the country\u2019s Supreme Court in 2018\u00a0imposed strict conditions<\/a>\u00a0on such associations, barring them from most public activity and making them nearly impossible to function legally.\u00a0<\/p>\n Rather than appealing within the Spanish judicial system, de la Figuera announced after the verdict that she intends to bring the case directly to the European Court of Human Rights, where a ruling could set a precedent for the entire European Union.\u00a0<\/p>\n Grandma Marijuana just may have the savvy to pull it off. In addition to being a skilled cultivator and medical provider, she is an activist of long years\u2019 experience. In 1995, after her historic court ruling, she founded the Cannabis Party for Legalization and Normalization (PCLYN), Spain\u2019s first national political party dedicated to marijuana liberation.<\/p>\n The following year, she founded the Ram\u00f3n Santos Association for the Study of Cannabis in Andalusia (ARSECA<\/a>), named after a late criminal defense attorney who defended many cultivators in the region and dedicated to documenting the medical benefits of the herb.\u00a0<\/p>\n And Mar\u00edasXMar\u00eda is a member of another national organization she helped found, the Federation of Cannabis Associations (FAC). She\u2019s also involved in the Action Group for the Legalization of Cannabis in Spain (GALCE), and its affiliated website,\u00a0Infocannabis<\/a>.<\/p>\n And she has taken her work to the continental level, as Spain representative of the European Coalition for Just and Effective Drug Policies (ENCOD<\/a>).<\/p>\n When her new case was still pending late last year, de la Figuera won an important symbolic victory, at least, when her province\u2019s ruling left-wing coalition,\u00a0Adelante M\u00e1laga<\/a>, came out unequivocally and publicly in her support, with provincial councilors\u00a0posing alongside her in a photo op<\/a>.<\/p>\n Her case may soon have an impact that will resonate across the European continent.<\/p>\n TELL US,<\/strong>\u00a0do you think it should be legal to grow your own pot?<\/p>\n The post Spain\u2019s \u2018Grandma Marijuana\u2019 Fights the Power<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Spain\u2019s foremost cannabis activist is a 76-year-old woman in the southern province of M\u00e1laga who has been asserting her right to home cultivation for over a generation now. Fernanda de la Figuera \u2014 ubiquitously known as Abuela Marijuana, or Grandma Marijuana \u2014 has been busted before, and won a landmarkContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[50,13270,490,570,90,139,1806,491],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41240"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41240"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41240\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41241,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41240\/revisions\/41241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\u2028\u2019Apostle of Homegrown\u2019 Won\u2019t Accept Deal\u2028<\/strong><\/h4>\n
\u2028From M\u00e1laga to Strasbourg<\/strong><\/h4>\n
\n
\nRead More: Spain\u2019s \u2018Grandma Marijuana\u2019 Fights the Power<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"