Are cannabis clubs going to be closed in Spain?

The first cannabis club in Barcelona opened 12 years ago, and 225 have emerged since then.

“The Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia annuls the licenses of cannabis associations and the Government does not regulate,” claims Spain’s Tercera Informacion. The associations with active licenses in the city will have to face an inspection campaign while the government neglects its responsibility to regulate cannabis associations as the courts deal another blow to them.”

It is, in fact, “the latest in a series of setbacks for the asociaciónes,`” as The Guardian explains. “In 2017, the court overruled a law passed by the Catalan parliament which said ‘private consumption of cannabis by adults … is part of the exercise of the fundamental right to free personal development and freedom of conscience.”
The system had kept operating thanks to a Barcelona city bylaw regulating the use, “but this too has now been overturned, with the judges ruling that the city authorities were not competent to legislate on matters governed by the state.”

In a petition soliciting signers, the Asociation of Cannabis Catfac explains that “the use of cannabis by adults in the private sphere is an option that forms part of the exercise of the fundamental right to free development of personality, the right to freedom of conscience and the disposition of the body itself.”
City and police authorities have admitted that the clubs are an effective way of reducing street dealing and consumption and that in principle they’re not opposed to the clubs.