Catalonia raid: The Spanish region reins in the cannabis industry

A compelling article published by Reuters on Wednesday focused on law enforcement’s response to illicit cannabis production and trafficking in Spain’s Catalonia region.

“Heavily armed police officers arrived before dawn in an affluent Barcelona suburb to search a two-storey house containing 800 marijuana plants growing under powerful lights,” write Reuters journalists Horaci Garcia and Joan Faus. “The recent raid, in which Reuters accompanied officers in the arrest of two Albanian nationals, is part of the almost daily police routine in the Spanish region of Catalonia cracking down on booming illegal marijuana production, often run by local and international drug gangs .”

Catalonia, home to the majestic city of Barcelona, ​​has a strained relationship with the Spanish government – and tensions have spread to cannabis policy as well.

According to Reuters, it is “today Spain’s most important producing region, with most exports channeled to France by road”. The region is “attractive because producers can use plots of land left vacant after Spain’s housing bubble burst in 2008.” Evictions are lengthy, there is no jail sentence for electricity theft and lighter sentences are imposed for marijuana-related crimes than in neighboring countries.”

Catalonia legalized cannabis clubs in 2017, but an abrupt court ruling in 2021 overturned that law.

The ruling left the cannabis clubs that had sprung up around Barcelona in legal limbo, but as Reuters noted in its report this week, the clubs are now operating under “self-imposed rules” by which they “grow their own marijuana, which is only allowed”. Adults who can buy up to 60 grams a month and take 15 days to approve memberships to discourage short-term tourists.”

“But many clubs that are often hardly recognizable from the outside don’t follow the rules because they are voluntary,” said Reuters.

“We believe that the lack of (legal) control is causing a lot of problems,” Eric Asensio, chairman of the Catalan Confederation of Cannabis Clubs, told the news service.

Growing cannabis is against the law in Spain. Last year, Spanish lawmakers passed a measure that would authorize medical cannabis treatment in the country.

In November, the Guardia Civil, a law enforcement agency in Spain, busted an organization with more than 32 tons of cannabis stored in various cities across the country. According to the police, it was a record-breaking bankruptcy.

“The Civil Guard has seized the largest stash of packaged marijuana ever found. Operation Jardines ended with the seizure of 32,370.2 kilograms of marijuana buds, the largest seizure of this substance not only in Spain but also internationally. The equivalence in complete works would be around 1,100,000 copies,” the Spanish police said at the time.

“The twenty detainees – nine men and eleven women between the ages of 20 and 59 – belonged to an organization with offices in Toledo, Ciudad Real, Valencia and Asturias, which controlled the entire drug production and distribution process,” the police continued Announcement detailing the arrest. “The investigation began with an inspection by the Civil Guard of several industrial hemp plantations in Villacañas (Toledo). The most important [plantation] The people examined owned a company with which they acquired the seeds. A second transported and planted them. Another company was responsible for the care, maintenance, collection and drying of the samples.”

Police said the detainees packed the contraband in “different formats to send to both places on Spanish territory and to European countries, mainly Switzerland, Holland, Germany and Belgium”.