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\u201cThis is silly,\u201d I remember saying out loud\u00a0while hitting a joint in Barcelona. It was six or seven years ago, and I had just joined\u00a0\u00a0my first cannabis club in the city, C\u00edrculo. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s still open near my friend Lucy\u2019s apartment in Barcelona\u2019s El Born neighborhood. These days, it feels quaint, a bit dated\u2014already a relic of its time. But back then, it was a genuine revelation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can just light joints here?\u201d I remember thinking. \u201cWe\u2019re allowed to do that\u00a0inside?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n The answer was, mostly, \u201cyes,\u201d even though cannabis wasn\u2019t technically legal for medical or adult-use in Spain. Today, Barcelona is home to some 225 members-only cannabis lounges called\u00a0asociaciones\u00a0<\/em>(associations), which exist in a legal grey area. Back in 2000, the clubs started popping up as a result of a now-lauded legal analysis, which revealed that in the context of existing Spanish legislation, asociaciones\u00a0<\/em>could exist in which members would be able to obtain cannabis for personal use. Spain\u2019s Supreme Court ruled that possession of any size wasn\u2019t illegal if it was for personal use or part of a nonprofit.<\/p>\n At the time, a smattering of nonprofit asociaciones\u00a0<\/em>already operated private cannabis clubs in Spain. Their framework spread to other countries, serving as an early model for how it could be done. The post-2000 wave of clubs expanded on this model and was centered in Barcelona, which had the friendliest regional government toward cannabis.\u00a0\u00a0Today, all of Spain\u2019s asociaciones are set up as nonprofits, operating within the margins of that ruling.<\/p>\n Basically, it\u2019s legal to smoke weed in Spain, especially for those on private property. Growing for personal use is permitted, as is the sale of seeds, but selling and buying is strictly\u00a0prohibido.\u00a0<\/em>This means that in the clubs, payments are \u201cgifts\u201d or \u201cdonations,\u201d y\u2019know, because it\u2019s a nonprofit. The words \u201cmoney,\u201d \u201cbuy,\u201d \u201csell\u201d aren\u2019t allowed. Everything is an exchange or otherwise freely given. One donates at the front desk after entering in a likely unmarked door from the street. Credits are added to a key fob or card, which is then scanned inside the club. There\u2019s no commerce. At least that\u2019s the theory.\u00a0<\/p>\n The reality is that, like so many other rules in Spain, the cannabis laws aren\u2019t enforced with a heavy hand. Many clubs, which are only supposed to accept Spanish residents as members will be all too happy to accept a tourist\u2019s Airbnb or hotel address as well. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n They\u2019re also incredibly patient but firm with tourists, like me, who momentarily forget the rules only to blurt out that they\u2019re buying fat California nugs that mysteriously popped up in a nonprofit cannabis club on the Mediterranean coast.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cHey, no!\u201d said Maria Jos\u00e9, a budtender from Argentina. She gingerly waved her finger in my face while her eyes widened. I was out of practice\u2014I spent the first two COVID-19 years in California, where I live, blissfully buying weed and talking about it openly. The vibe in Barcelona was chill, as it always was, but that doesn\u2019t make cannabis\u00a0actually\u00a0<\/em>legal. Discretion still trades at a premium in this beautiful country, even if weed prices have become more reasonable while quality has improved.<\/p>\n In March 2022, I decided I\u2019d visit as many clubs in Barcelona as my wallet would allow. Thanks to the global pandemic and my divorce, I hadn\u2019t been to Barcelona since November 2019. I was itching to not only visit the city, but also to check out the first Spannabis, Europe\u2019s most important cannaconference, in three years and experience this dynamic city\u2019s club, cultivation and hash scene. I wanted to visit Terps Army, which is a Barcelona outpost of the famed Amsterdam coffee shop, as well as Cookies, which is an official location of the California cannabrand started by San Francisco rapper and entrepreneur Berner.<\/p>\n I reasoned that visiting at least three or four more was reasonable for a week-long visit. The membership fees at the asociaciones vary, especially depending on location and clientele. Though C\u00edrculo, my mainstay club, is in a touristy part of town, it\u2019s older and dingier than its newer counterparts. Its membership is an affordable 20 euro per year. HQ, in the also touristy L\u2019Eixample neighborhood, clocks in at 50 euro, though it\u2019s decidedly more upscale and offers much better weed. Still, it was clear that different subcultures within this already mostly underground scene were emerging. A type of choose-your-own-adventure, but for cannabis.<\/p>\n \u201cThings have really blown up here,\u201d I said to Soklak, a French street artist and rapper who\u2019s also the creative director of CRTFD, a California-born cannabis lifestyle brand that operates clubs in Europe, including Barcelona. \u201cIt feels different, even just since COVID hit.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s true, things really have changed,\u201d Soklak said, taking a puff of a long spliff he had just rolled and exhaling into the air above him. \u201cIt\u2019s been recent, too.\u201d<\/p>\n Soklak\u2019s tall, thin and, to me, looked like a casually dressed Daniel Craig. Quiet and thoughtful, he lit up when I was able to connect the street art on display in the club with the city\u2019s wider graffiti, skate and anarchist culture that churned in Barcelona\u2019s subculture for years. The elements were interwoven but distinct and cannabis coursed through all of it. \u201cThat\u2019s exactly what we\u2019re trying to do here,\u201d he said. \u201cBring together art and cannabis culture, because they naturally belong together.\u201d<\/p>\n Soklak explained that even as culture capitals such as Paris stayed \u201cdead\u201d as far as their attitude toward cannabis, and weed-friendly destinations such as Amsterdam continued to crack down on gains made in legal cannabis sales and consumption, Barcelona is well positioned to take advantage given its chill attitude and second-to-none club culture allowing the city to take over as the top European destination for cannabis aficionados.<\/p>\n Add to that a perfect perch on the Mediterranean Sea, as well as national access to the African continent at Gibraltar, which sits at the border with the robust cannabis-producing Morocco, and there\u2019s a supply chain from seed-to-sale ready to explode. A healthy supply also comes in from the US, plus, there are state-of-the-art indoor grows in Catalonia producing bud that would make any American do a double-take.<\/p>\n Other visiting US residents, apart from me, also noticed how much things had changed in recent years. Nathaniel Pennington, head of the legendary Humboldt Seed Company, summed it up at the Spannabis conference by telling me, \u201cBusiness is good. Very good. I mean, we have employees here!\u201d while motioning to some of his Barcelona-based staff members.<\/p>\n He\u2019s right. The point stands on its own.<\/p>\n Back at the asociaciones,\u00a0<\/em>Roger Volodarsky, CEO of electronic hash gear maker Puffco, was downright giddy looking around at the crowds inside the clubs. For starters, they were made up of mostly men, which he acknowledged would be nice if it changed, but we agreed it wasn\u2019t likely to happen any time soon. Still, a huge shift was happening among these men. A bunch of them were dabbing\u2014something that was genuinely quite rare to see on any given day in any club in Barcelona, even just a few years ago.<\/p>\n Hash culture is big in Barcelona, but traditionally so, with big bricks and temple balls dominating. Apart from that, flower is king, but often more expensive or in shorter supply, so spliffs with tobacco are popular, too. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Dabs\u2014the way we experience them in the US, in particular\u2014are brand new territory. Puffco hasn\u2019t made its big push into Europe quite yet, but Volodarsky told me that was about to change.<\/p>\n \u201cEurope has loved hash for a really long time, but this new version of hash centered around water hash, rosin and BHO that\u2019s become popular in the US, has really started to take off in Europe,\u201d Volodarsky said while we chatted in HQ Barcelona, enjoying joints.\u00a0<\/p>\n Volodarsky says that, since it\u2019s still early days, the old dab tools of nails, quartz bangers and torches is how it\u2019s done. Obviously, he sees a huge opportunity for his business. \u201cThis market is being primed for the Puffco Peak,\u201d he told me while a Fidels hash hole joint was passed back and forth. Fidel sat just to our right, eclipsed by a low-hanging hash haze.<\/p>\n Elsewhere in the city, things were buzzing, albeit quietly. Tourism has collapsed since the onset of the pandemic, which depressed the local economy. Barcelona has a long, fraught history with its visiting vacationers who have simultaneously filled the city\u2019s coffers while displacing residents and ushering in other social ills. Cannabis stepped in where COVID-19 created room. Spain\u2019s grey-legal cannabis industry is now thriving due to low risk of serious jail time and good profit margins (thanks to what criminalization risk still exists); a mostly cannabis-tolerant population; demand elsewhere in Europe and growing intra-European travel.<\/p>\n I\u2019m so glad beautiful Barcelona gave me so many reasons to happily return to the land of my not-so-distant past.<\/p>\n This story was originally published in the\u00a0print edition<\/a>\u00a0of Cannabis Now.<\/em><\/p>\n The post Barcelona: Back From the Brink<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is silly,\u201d I remember saying out loud\u00a0while hitting a joint in Barcelona. It was six or seven years ago, and I had just joined\u00a0\u00a0my first cannabis club in the city, C\u00edrculo. It\u2019s still open near my friend Lucy\u2019s apartment in Barcelona\u2019s El Born neighborhood. These days, it feels quaint,Continue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":418,"featured_media":57682,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5146,3931,50,1365,16571,1266,490,85,16506,10106,16572,491,1672],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57681"}],"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\/418"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57681"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57681\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57683,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57681\/revisions\/57683"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Club](\"https:\/\/cannabisnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/CirculoJackieBryant.jpg\")
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\nRead More: Barcelona: Back From the Brink<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"