When the confiscation of the plants and the criminal accusation of the four ARSEC members became public news, a typically Catalan reaction occurred. Soceity turned against the repressive forces of the central government and embraced the cause ARSEC had set out to defend. This reaction is understandable in light of the Catalan history of independence from Spain.
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"The people of Catalonia have campaigned for independence for centuries. The efforts
have been defeated on multiple occasions, often with the complicity of political leaders and
economic elites of Catalan society, but they have never given up. This constant friction built
a Catalan civil society that has organized itself socially, politically, economically, and culturally
outside of the state system."¹ |
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Thus, the sentiment of shared frustration and solidarity in response to central government abuse fed a wave of support for the defiant association, with artists and intellectuals publicly denouncing the unjustified respons from the prosecutor's office. Membership of the association increased from one hundred to almost four thousand paying members in the course of a few months. Although it never had been the intend to turn ARSEC into a profitable operation, the financial infusion allowed the accused to face possible fines and even permitted the association to economically assist new associations that were now sprouting in other cities and regions of the peninsula. In other countires the citizens might have refrained from getting involved in a messy legal situation, but Spain's citizens are protected by the constitutional rights to privacy and association.
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"The Right to Privacy affords Spanish citizens the right to do mostly whatever they want in private, including consume drugs. This protection also allows a person to cultivate marijuana for personal consumption, although it does not specify how much marijuana a person can have, or how many plants can be grown; it’s a general right to privacy.
The Right to Association allows citizens to organize as groups. In relation to the Right to Privacy, if private citizens wish to get together and grow and/or consume a personal amount of cannabis in a private space, they are Constitutionally protected in this aim."² |
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With ten duly registered cannabis associations throughout Spain by 1995, ARSEC invited their representatives to Barcelona to form a national platform to support its legal battle. Early 1996 the National Coordinator of Associations for the Normalization of Cannabis (Coordinadora Estatal por la Normalización del Cannabis) was oficially launched with the campaign Contra la Prohibición, me planto, Against Prohibition, I stand. If that campaign accomplished anything it was the media noise about the ARSEC case, exactly the result hoped for.
In the spring of that same year the trial started, almost three years after the plants had been confiscated. The four accused admitted to have cultivated the plants for educational purposes and because they preferred not to depend on the illegal traffic of cannabis products and the inherent possibility of being duped with adulterated products. Their lawyer, Javier Ignacio Prieto, a respected professor of penal law, stressed the fact that the defendants had acted in accordance with the Barcelona prosecutor and that their cultivation had been intended for the personal use of the members, never intended to be distributed to third parties.
This seemed like a
straightforward defense that stressed the defendants' respect for the law and their good intentions with regards to the thorny issue of cannabis in Catalan society. Lawyer Prieto speculated on the court's willingness to appreciate the exemplary social behavior of his clients and absolve them from any crime.
And this is exactly what happened. The argument was accepted by the court in its sentence of June 26, that same year. The judges also rejected the prosecution's argument about the easy access to the terrain where the cannabis was being cultivated, without the necessary measures having been taken to prevent undetemined persons and minors to get hold of the marihuana. The court replied that the terrain was difficult to find and enter and that signs indicating that this was a private property, prohibiting its entrance, had been properly placed to warn would-be intruders. The magistrates established moreover that the possibility that a member would sell some or the total of his part of the harvest would be "an individual conduct that would harm the public health without however allowing to attribute this result to the accused. Finally, the sentence acknowledges mistakes made by the prosecution in the preparatory phase of the trial that infringed the right ot a just trial.³
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On June 26, 1996, the four defendants faced the Court in Tarragona, accused of enda-gering the public health, the prosecutor asking 9 years jail for each of them.
In the face of the accused one can discern the seriousness of their situation. The presiding judge tried to put them at ease by stating that the court would have had to jail all the members of the association if found guilty, but the defendants only relaxed after the entire verdict acquitting them had been read. |
From left to right:
Jaume Torrens, lawyer.
Jaume Prats, biologist
Katy Baltierrez, politicologist
Felipe Borrallo, bookseller |
Upon leaving the courthouse, Felipe Borrallo declared to the press that he hoped that the prosecutor would appeal the decision of the court. "What we want", said Borrallo, "is to create a precedent and show that it is possible to cultivate marihuana for personal use or for study and that, moreover, this can be done collectively, on a farm, and with a collective of persons taking charge of the plantation."⁴ He suggested moreover that if the prosecutor would not appeal, ARSEC would sue the Guardia Civil for having entered illegally on private property and had prevented the harvest of a legal agricultural enterprise.
Felipe didn't have to worry for too long, since the prosecutor - according to the ARSEC defendants against his own inclination - appealed the case within days of the verdict to Spain's Supreme Court. |
