For lunchbreak from their comics publishing activities, the Makokis would go to the nearby popular restaurant Mercadillo de Puerta Ferrissa, which had a patio where they would eat and hang out, often for hours, with a bottle of brandy and some weed, discussing and listening to the stories about his day in court of lawyer Ramon Santos. Ramon had a lifelong advocacy experience and a noble heart, the two of whom he used in court for the benefit of his clients, often people accused of drugs related activities.
Ramon’s competence and idealism infected the Makokis, hashish smokers all of them, so that when their lawyer friend passed away they kept talking about defending their rights. That’s when Jaume Torrens, a younger colleague of Santos, who had come along with the master to enjoy the communal meals, now suggested to form a legal entity, “an association that would defend the rights of cannabis consumers”. Once they decided to go ahead, Jaume drew up the statutes, Felipe signed, and Katy went to the Public Registrar to inscribe the association, and was refused. Cannabis consumers could not be accepted, but students could. That’s how they became students, with Ramon Santos as their patron saint.
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Ramón
Santos Fernández
Friend, teacher and genius for whom sixty years of existence were dense, active and unstoppable. Defender of the consumers of prohibited substances before the courts and notable jurist in criminal matters, he dedicated his best hours and energies to their fight for freedom and legal security.
The doors of his lawyer's office were always open to the "fumetas" of all ways of life that from the fifties onward became an assiduous clientele of police stations and the courts. |
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Then, on March 13, 1992, the "Ley Corcuera", The Organic Law on Protection of Public Security, named for interior minister Jose Luis Corcuera, entered in force. Cannabis consumption was now punishable by law and consumers could be fined; if there was suspicion of a 'cannabis crime' being committed, the forces of the law could enter private property without warrant. "Ley de la patada en la puerta" the law was called: Law for kicking in the door!
The cannabis consumers associated under the patronage of Ramon Santos got very upset about these repressive measures and meditated on the proper answer to this mean attack on their happiness. The first thing to do would be to properly manifest their discontent. Katy, with years of political experience under his belt, started writing a manifest, driven by Trotskyist ideology and cannabic rage.
Meanwhile in Vic, 60 Kms inland, Jaime Prats and his friends were also planning to protest this new law, talking about forming an association to defend their communal rights. Jaime remembers that "upon hearing that in the Plaça del Pi functioned a recently created association with the same characteristics, we went down to Barcelona and affiliated with ARSEC."
Writing in the June 2016 edition of Cañamo magazine at the occasion of the 25th anniversary of ARSEC's foundation, Katy, after confessing that up till that day he had been ignorant of the fact that hachish was produced from the marihuana plant, states that "it was at the first General Assembly of ARSEC that we read the Manifest and it was at that meeting that we - urbanites - were joined by the farmers, 'captained' by Jaime Prats. From that felicitous encounter arose the the idea of a collective plantation for individual consumption and collective study."¹
For his agricultural knowledge, Jaime was at once appointed 'botanic' of the association. But he realized soon that before they could plant, the members had to learn about plants and planting. Thus, he set off on a lecture tour of Barcelona's 'underground', explaining to the 'urbanites' the technique of growing your own plants and the advantages of cultivating over having to buy hashish on the black market. In the mean time Jaume Torrens, Felipe Borrallo and Katy Baltierrez send letters to different judicial², social and academic institutions, informing about their plans for a collective plantation . "The favorable response³ from Prosecutor J.M. Mena, mobilized resources, enthusiasm, complicity and large doses of generosity among the people of ARSEC, barely a hundred at that time."⁴
Jaime Prats remembers this episode in a slightly different way:
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"The answer from the public prosecutor at that time, José María Mena, was: 'The reference for consumption specifies that it is limited exclusively to the concrete production for self-consumption, which should be understood as individual, non-punishable, and not the collective self-consumption of the association, which would raise serious penal problems.' That answer did not exactly solve our doubts, but it encouraged us to go ahead."⁵ |
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The last hurdle was taken when in a general assembly and not after a heated debate, the project to collectively cultivate in Montbrió del Camp was unanimously accepted by all of ARSEC's members. In the words of Felipe Borrallo:
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"The public prosecutor had stated that a plantation for the consumption of the members would not be a punishable crime. But that was all theory, since there had not as yet been a concrete case. So the assembly decided to put the theory into practice. Joaquín Blasco provided us the land in Montbrió del Camp and when spring arrived, some seventy members committed to carry out the planting and take care of the upkeep of the plantation."⁶ |
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