If there have been two burning topics in Barcelona this summer, they’re tourism and the future of cannabis clubs. Two issues where the city council plays a key role—both by action, with the crackdown on clubs that began earlier this year, and by omission, through the lack of policies to regulate the city’s ever-growing gentrification, which keeps driving up prices and deepening the housing crisis.
Often, with understandable frustration over having their claims ignored, locals feel increasingly pushed out of their own city. At other times, resistance to change—or even an inherent undercurrent of xenophobia—fuels tensions. Either way, native Barcelonans are the main ones affected, and they’re fed up.
Clubs are supposed to be the city’s open secret. But, in reality, they’ve become a huge tourist draw, and that sparks constant misreadings between visitors, locals, cannabis clubs, police, and city officials. Much like what’s happening in real estate, culture, and hospitality, clubs are now reshaping their membership policies, menus, and prices in response to a growing wave of tourists from wealthier countries.
How do these issues intersect legally, politically, economically, and socially? Is there a connection between gentrification and the fact that clubs are increasingly under threat? Who are Barcelona’s cannabis clubs really for?
Who Can Be a Member: A Never-Ending Misunderstanding
There are no official numbers (a major problem in itself), but estimates suggest there are between 200 and 300 cannabis clubs in Barcelona. It’s often claimed they’re only for locals and residents, but that’s not strictly true. Many clubs don’t take in people without official residency in Barcelona, but technically, anyone with valid ID, an invitation (if needed), and cash for the membership fee can join.
The confusion comes from the gap between what most people—including the police—believe and the actual legal framework governing the asos (short for asociaciones, as they’re called locally). No law or manual explicitly forbids admitting foreigners, non-residents, or people without local registration. Yet, the controversy never wanes.
To understand the why, you need to look back at how clubs operated years ago. Around 2010, when the associative model started spreading, clubs worked under the concept of shared cultivation: members collectively owned the weed being grown, paying for their share of the plants. But court rulings over the years gradually redefined this model.
Barcelona’s City Council was the only one in the country to regulate clubs via the municipal Cannabis Club Ordinance, defining where they could operate and what requirements they had to meet, like installing ventilation systems and fire extinguishers. That it happened here was no coincidence, given that Barcelona is Spain’s most touristic city by far and also its biggest magnet for migrants.
This regulation gave a “legal” framework to something that already existed throughout the country, fueling a boom in local clubs. But the ordinance never allowed for dispensing, selling, or distributing cannabis.
Today, the model has shifted. Almost no club claims to grow its own product anymore. Legally, most now operate as consumption spaces: you can use weed inside, but not “buy” it (hence why the old term retirar, “to withdraw,” still lingers from the shared grow era). That means, under the current model, there’s no law defining who can or can’t join. That’s up to each club.
Being a member no longer means co-owning plants, but many people, including the cops, still don’t realize this. “It’s something police often use as an excuse when a club admits foreigners, but the reality is the law doesn’t prohibit it. It’s just a popular belief,” explains Marta De Luxán Marco, a.k.a. Marta High, a cannabis lawyer and part of the technical team at the European Observatory for Cannabis Consumption and Cultivation.
In 2020, clubs took a major hit that forced them to tighten entry rules. The High Court of Catalonia, in ruling 1627/2020, repealed the Ordinance regulating Cannabis Consumer Clubs, sending an information letter that even banned consumption on the premises—though that part was never enforced.
One thing, however, hasn’t changed: “Dispensing (selling) is illegal, whichever way you look at it, and the Supreme Court has made that crystal clear. Making substances available to other people, whether members or not, is considered a public health crime.”
Why Sometimes Yes, Sometimes No
The real problem is that many tourists don’t know (or don’t care) what a cannabis club really is and how it actually works: they think it’s like Amsterdam’s coffee shops or California dispensaries, where you can where you can pass around addresses freely, show up in groups, or even buy other substances. They assume weed is legal, anyone can buy unlimited amounts, and smoke wherever. That kind of misunderstanding creates problems on several levels.
For Marta, it’s not only about provoking the law: it’s about betraying the spirit of clubs. Practices like street promotion, aggressively targeting tourists, or letting anyone in encourage consumption instead of protecting the community. “The spirit of the clubs is not like Holland’s coffee shops, where anyone can walk in and buy weed to try it for the first time,” she explains.
Santiago, an Argentine traveler, first discovered a club in 2018 by searching “coffee shop” on Maps, where he found a contact email. The club replied in English, told him to bring valid ID for a short interview, and mentioned a €20 annual fee. “I thought it would be a tourist trap,” he recalls. “But when I got there, I was the only foreigner. Everyone else was local. There was even a group of Italians being loud and laughing, and they got kicked out.”
Some clubs won’t accept anyone without at least a temporary foreigner ID (NIE) in process. Others, by contrast, actively court tourists and seasonal workers, especially from Europe or North America. Why? Because they’ve got money, spend freely, and usually aren’t police targets. With no regulations, clubs push the limits: some charge higher fees for tourists, or offer special memberships for non-residents at inflated prices.
The line seems to lie somewhere between ethics and the interests of those running the club. This widens the gap between small, community-oriented clubs and tourist-focused ones. The divide is mostly economic, and another ripple effect of Barcelona’s relentless gentrification.
“Of course gentrification plays a role, especially because there are clubs specifically catering to tourists, and even tourists from certain countries,” says Marta High.
Membership Policies
Christina, an American living in Barcelona on a visa, is a member of three clubs. Each charges around €30 per year, renewable annually. She got her first membership when she was just a tourist, with no local registration. In all three cases, her U.S. ID was enough.
“From what I see, the clubs I’m in accept both tourists and locals, after carefully explaining the rules and as long as they pay the membership fee. I haven’t seen referrals being needed for any of them.” Prices inside are reasonable, but memberships (offering no perks) are overpriced compared to the average.
Federico works at a small neighborhood club where membership costs a third of the price. Technically, they only admit residents (their own “rules” say so), but competition and the need for cash mean they often look the other way if a tourist shows up with a member’s invitation and a valid passport.
The one rule they strictly enforce: referrals. Every new member must come with a guarantor who signs for them, a way to keep out undercover cops or disruptive people, regardless of origin.
So, is admitting tourists worth the risk? Or rather, is it really a risk? “Depends on the club model,” Marta says. “Some are intimate neighborhood clubs. Others run more corrupt models where nothing matters. For them, it’s worth it. If they get into trouble, they solve it and go right back. But that’s not the associative model, that’s exploiting it.”
“Many think this is Holland,” she presses.
Basic codes of conduct—like not smoking outside, not carrying 50 grams on you, or not drawing attention—are pretty basic, but often ignored. Some clubs even require members to stay inside for 15 minutes before leaving.
Spannabis, Spain’s annual cannabis convention which attracts experts on the matter from all round the world, is its own beast: a flood of non-residents club-hopping all week. The biggest headaches come from Dutch, American, and Canadian visitors who, used to their own systems, walk out of clubs with far more than a personal stash. Again, the problem is misinformation about Spanish law.
Marta recalls a case during Spannabis where police detained a Dutch guy as he left a club. That’s a classic tactic: wait outside, stop someone, then use it to get a search warrant. The cops claimed admitting foreigners was illegal and accused the tourist of committing a crime. In fact, both claims contradicted each other given that the guy had only a personal-use amount. Still, he ended up in court.
The Aesthetics of Gentrification
How do you spot a tourist-oriented club at first glance?
There are tells: heavy focus on edibles (not very popular among Spanish consumers), paraphernalia, cosmetics, or pre-rolled “verdes” (all-weed joints). Traditional Catalan stoners aren’t experimental: they roll with tobacco, smoke hash (a.k.a. chocolate), or maybe dabble in extractions.
Early on, clubs looked like extensions of Spain’s bar and café culture: simple, unpretentious meeting spots for hanging out. But increasingly, the “spectacularization” of the club experience (very American in style) offers DJs, live music, games, even yoga classes. A 360° entertainment model meant to justify steep membership fees. A shift from a meeting place to an entertainment spot.
Sofía works at a neighborhood club that admits non-residents if they show up accompanied by a member. “It has good and bad sides,” she says. “Sure, it brings in more money and popularity, but in clubs where most people are tourists, prices are higher and the vibe is worse. Personally, I’ll always choose small, local-oriented clubs: friendlier, warmer, cheaper.”
Money Isn’t (and Can’t Be) Everything
It’s a chicken-and-egg paradox: tourism gets blamed for Barcelona’s crackdown, but more often it’s the clubs’ own adaptations to tourism that put them in the crosshairs. “In a city so focused on tourism, tourist-oriented clubs need to be easy to find,” Marta says, contrasting Barcelona with the discreet, low-profile model seen elsewhere in Spain.
Right now, Barcelona clubs are under siege from the City Council, and they’re facing one of their most difficult times since they began appearing; but until very recently, the Catalan city was one of the safest, most peaceful, and most forgiving places to open an aso.
“Currently, at least 30 clubs are facing closure orders. Some have been sealed shut. The battle continues in court, and we’re hopeful, but the city council is at war with cannabis clubs, intent on wiping them out. Some judges suspend closures while appeals are pending, others don’t and shut them down. This is an injustice, and depending on which kind of judge you get, your fate can be very different,” Marta explains.
Outside Barcelona, most Spanish clubs stick closely to the private, community-first model: quiet, by word of mouth, prioritizing privacy and safety over profit. That’s why in Madrid, Galicia, or the Basque Country, you might think there are “no clubs at all”—when really, they make a big effort to stay off the radar.
Agustina, an Argentine who travels often for work, is a member of one club in Madrid and one in Barcelona. “In Madrid, I’ve been going for years and only recently was I allowed to recommend a friend. It’s very local; you feel the members are regulars and not just passing through.” Still, they didn’t make a big deal out of her not being a resident; they just asked her to fill out her personal information and sign a document taking responsibility if the police caught her with weed outside the club.
In Barcelona, she joined one several years ago through an acquaintance who worked as a PR for the club. They charged her a steep membership fee of 50 euros. When she returned some time later, to no one’s surprise, the club was gone. Now she belongs to another one through a friend who works there, which got her in for free “This one is more tourist-oriented; I always see gringos,” she explains. “And, worth noting, the crowd is overwhelmingly male.”
Maintaining the “club spirit” over the “business mindset” matters not just romantically or nostalgically. Nor is it only about a certain purism, resistance to change or clinging to simpler values: it shakes the very delicate structure that allows those clubs that truly operate as clubs—community-oriented, grassroots, and existing since the beginning—to survive.
Because promoting cannabis associations as tourist attractions in a country where selling weed is illegal is dangerous. The ethical line that separates something necessary and community-based from a shady business is razor-thin, and it’s shaped by these kinds of decisions.
Lose the associative spirit, and what remains is undeclared profit: charging whatever they want for whatever they want, without regulation or oversight of product quality, finances, or labor rights. (And let’s be clear: in the vast majority of clubs, workers are paid in cash, off the books, with no benefits, no protections, and no right to unemployment support).
Worse, opening to the public—through street promos or social media—risks admitting people who can’t or shouldn’t consume, who don’t respect the rules, who don’t know it’s illegal or who simply don’t behave. That creates conflicts with neighbors, run-ins with police, and increasingly paints clubs as social nuisances. And who pays the price? The smaller, community-driven clubs; the ones that reject corruption and don’t have the resources to buy their way out. A vicious cycle.
Photo by Transly Translation Agency on Unsplash
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