The story
In 2012 the small Catalan municipality of Rasquera tried to turn a cannabis plantation into a debt plan. The proposal promised €1.3 million and jobs, but it collided with national law and was later revoked by a court.
A town and an association
Rasquera had about 960 residents and municipal debt of roughly the same size as the proposed payment. Mayor Bernat Pellisa agreed that the town would lease land to ABCDA, a Barcelona cannabis association said to have 5,000 members.
The association planned to cultivate cannabis for those members on an area described as about ten football pitches. The mayor said the project would create employment and bring revenue, with cereal and sugar beet rotated alongside cannabis. Reports projected about 40 jobs.
The referendum
The council put the plan to a local vote on 10 April 2012. It set a high political threshold: approval from 75 per cent of voters. The referendum attracted international attention because the proposed payment was about the size of the village’s debt.
A majority voted yes, but only 56.3 per cent supported the proposal. It therefore missed the threshold that the mayor had set. The vote showed local support without giving the plan the political mandate its authors had required.
The national drug authorities opposed the project. They argued that cultivation on that scale would violate Spanish law and said they would act to prevent it. The dispute exposed the gap between Spain’s tolerance of private consumption and associations on one side, and the absence of a lawful commercial cultivation system on the other.
The court ends the plan
In May 2013 a court in Tarragona revoked Rasquera’s agreements with the cannabis association. The Local reported the court’s view that financial problems and limited employment did not make the contracts a matter of public interest.
The ruling stopped the proposed municipal plantation. Whatever space Spanish law left for private use or member associations, it did not allow a town to transform a large supply project into ordinary public finance.
Why the index did not move
The Rasquera proposal was debated, voted on locally and blocked before it created a legal supply route. It did not change national law across Spain, so none of the six index scores moves. The event remains useful context for the uncertain legal boundary around Spain’s cannabis associations.[1][2]
In the cultural atlas
Listed for context. No score change is recorded for Spain here.
References
Checked. The date and the event were compared with a source that was read.