Let’s go.
Quickly.
Dawn in Catalonia, eastern Spain.
These officers are in the middle of an operation
to locate illegal cannabis farms
they suspect of being on the property
as part of a year-long investigation.
The marijuana business is booming here
and flourishing in a legal loophole.
The weed from Barcelona
now goes all around the world.
Full neighborhoods full of people growing,
and the police are afraid of them.
Why? Because they know these guys are armed. They have weapons.
We are catching a lot of guns like this one.
Although buying and consuming marijuana
inside Catalonia’s cannabis clubs is legal,
police now say these associations are being used as fronts by drug mafias,
transforming this region of Spain
into the center of Europe's illegal cannabis market.
[Europe’s Weed Capital]
There’s a bit of everything here.
All of these are “Tropical Banana.”
There’s more here.
In one of Barcelona’s hidden basements,
a weed farmer grows cannabis to sell around the world.
In many other countries,
getting caught doing this would incur a prison sentence.
With police, well,
they caught us with 1.5 kilos.
They detained me one day, and the next, I was free.
I was charged with offenses against public health,
the same as smoking a joint.
Barcelona has long had a permissive attitude
towards cannabis consumption.
At the end of Las Ramblas,
a statue of Christopher Columbus stands pointing out towards the sea.
On the column, two marijuana plants can be seen climbing upwards.
Columbus used it in everything, including the sails of his ships,
the oil he used to light his lamps,
which would help him read the pages of his hemp Bible.
It’s even rumored that he smoked joints with people in Cuba
to celebrate his safe passage.
And some believe he was the first to smuggle the plant back to Europe.
Today, there are officially 156 cannabis clubs in Barcelona,
with many more flying under the radar.
These are places where people can come to buy and smoke weed.
Both of them are locally grown here in Spain,
and there have been people doing these things for hundreds of years.
I mean, it’s just going to be
through and through a more high-quality product.
During the recent pandemic,
with tourism numbers at an all-time low,
many of the cannabis associations
have been infiltrated by violent mafias
hoping to control the growing market.
We had a group of armed gentlemen come in and...
unfortunately, inflict some physical violence
on a couple of the people who were volunteers and staff members here,
robbed product and robbed what cash we had on hand.
And so we did what was necessary to improve security:
put more cameras in,
a different way to ultimately exit and enter the club.
You didn’t hear about a lot of that stuff happening
with associations here in Spain prior to Covid.
Somebody’s always going to want to take something that’s not theirs,
that they didn’t work to get, unfortunately,
and people will do desperate things.
The police, we haven’t anything against the marijuana.
A lot of people, normal people have marijuana in their house,
and the people now hold weed everywhere.
The problem is the crime organizations.
The violence increased a lot by this problem.
With marijuana, everybody needs weapons to defend.
Here there are a lot of weapons from a lot of investigations.
With marijuana, we catch sometimes Kalashnikov.
This is a very dangerous weapon.
It has a very high capacity of fire, you know.
And we are catching a lot of guns like this one, OK?
We only push the trigger one time,
and it’s like a submachine.
It’s like a submachine gun.
It’s very, very dangerous.
What happens with the clubs is legal.
One club can have 1,000 associates.
Then we can have 5,000 plants.
And this is legal in Spain.
The organized crime see this inspiration, and they say,
“I go inside in this business,” and they make a club.
But it’s not a club.
Over the past year, the police have been raiding associations
they suspect are trading the product internationally,
successfully intercepting 24 criminal organizations
and destroying 319 plantations.
Javier was running an association
which was recently raided by the police
on suspicion of being part of a wider criminal network,
allegations he denies.
Sorry about the mess. This is how they left this.
They pulled this out.
They searched everything.
They took out the camera system.
And I had no weapons, no scales, no hard drugs, no, you know.
I had a couple of buds of weed, and that’s it.
And I said, “Please don’t break anything. It’s right here.”
It’s empty now because they took it.
I think it was 120 grams or something like this.
Basically nothing.
And I had no criminal record at all whatsoever.
We’re not used to this as normal people, you know,
where you get 20 guys busting your door,
coming in all fast with violence, guns, and stuff like this.
I still have that feeling in the back of my neck,
you know, something, somebody’s following me
because they were following us for a long time.
I’m afraid of doing anything related to weed now.
Clubs are permitted to produce the drug in proportion to membership.
However, they have recently had to turn to the black market
to match demand.
What should you call me?
Please, some help.
“The Kid.”
No, “The Wolf.” “The Wolf” is better.
Why do you feel you have to hide your identity?
What I do is illegal
because I move quantities.
But if I don’t move these quantities,
then the associations and all the people coming here
sometimes they don’t have [cannabis]
because their farm is empty
or they get caught, the farm, by the police.
I take the weed from the farm,
move it to the different association
or send it to the other countries.
Germany,
England, France,
Italy.
In Europe, they are asking for our weed.
In their countries, the price is very expensive,
so the weed from Barcelona now goes all around the world.
This is good quality weed.
The smell also.
I really try to pack my weed the best way so it doesn’t smell, you know.
Clean the bag.
Clean it again with alcohol.
Put it in another bag,
and maybe another bag and another bag.
You need to hide it in something, and it can be anything.
This table is a perfect example.
You need to be creative, and you need to change your ways
because if you always use the same move,
you will not survive a lot here.
Some gangs, mafia, understood that they could make a lot of money on it,
and so they try to erase the little producers, the little clubs.
They come with the guns. They beat the people a bit.
They will try to take care about your family,
and so you don’t want them to be into that, you know,
so you give them what they want and you get the fuck out.
The price of cannabis triples when it leaves Spain,
making the export lucrative for Catalonian growers
and organized crime.
Now, gangs are using delivery routes
through back roads crossing the Pyrenees to get into France,
eventually reaching all corners of Europe,
including Scandinavia and Ireland.
The police have been working with European crime agencies,
Interpol, and French police to intercept the trafficking routes.
The last year in Spain, we caught one million plants.
And every year, it’s increasing.
Everybody is going to marijuana.
And normal people are going to marijuana. It’s a big problem.
This oppression began because German police, the BKA,
talked with us, and they said, “We have a lot of marijuana here
and we think it comes from Spain.”
There is a big web between our marijuana routes.
And then when you have two or three people who have a plantation,
and you begin to investigate these people,
very quickly you know there are more people, more, more, more.
That web, it’s very, very big.
Around 30 police officers are being briefed near their headquarters,
waiting for the right moment to start their operation.
When the time is right,
15 raids would be coordinated simultaneously across the region.
Lights, lights... out.
Let’s go.
Quickly.
Maybe we are able to go inside, but not here.
During the raids, they arrested two gang leaders
accused of growing 7,000 plants and buds worth thousands of dollars
located in a nearby warehouse.
However, with cannabis-related convictions
carrying short sentences here,
police fear these individuals may soon be released.
The problem is, here in Spain, if you are arrested by the police
because you are trafficking a lot of marijuana,
normally you go to the judge,
and the judge [gives you] a punishment under two years.
But people under arrest the first time don’t go to jail.
You are free.
It’s difficult in Spain to go inside for traffic dealers.
Despite the problems presented by loose cannabis laws,
some farmers are doubtful that legalization will be the solution.
If they legalize it,
they would have to do it well,
and they won’t.
They would have to legalize everything: the cultivation,
possession.
If that’s not done, then no.
I’d rather it stay the way it is.
Is the plantation inside?
Yes.
OK.
The main problem is if you see the countries who produce drugs,
for example, heroin [in] Afghanistan, Colombia with cocaine,
Morocco with hashish, and Mexico [with] cocaine,
these countries, the situation is very, very bad.
But we produce marijuana. We’re one of the number ones of the world.
You think, “OK, who will Spain be in ten years?”