Fernanda de la Figuera. This cannabis activist can be sentenced to 4 years in jail for cannabis cultivation in Spain if the judge so decides on October 30
Different groups in favor of the legalization of cannabis in Spain are organizing a “green march”, the largest mobilization organized so far in Spain, to protest against the entry into prison of this female cannabis activist whom they call the “grandmother of the marijuana”, since she is one of the pioneers of the movement in favor of the legalization of cannabis in Spain.
If nothing prevents it, Fernanda de la Figuera, 76, will be tried on October 30 in Malaga (Spain) and will face a 4-year prison sentence for a marijuana crop he made in 2014. The Civil Guard seized the plants in her garden for more than a hundred members of a cannabis association of women called “Maríasxmaría”, who used cultivated marijuana to treat some diseases such as cancer, osteoarthritis or fibromyalgia.
The trial was to be held on April 25 at the Criminal Court number 5 of Malaga. But it was suspended for procedural reasons and will finally be held on October 30.
More than 100 cannabis organizations are calling their members and any supporter with the cause of the legalization of cannabis so that on October 30 they go to the City of Justice of Malaga to demonstrate in favor of this female cannabis activist who could be sentenced to 4 years in jail for cannabis cultivation. The organizers of the “green march” are going to charter buses so that citizens from anywhere in Spain can flock to the green march in favor of the acquittal of Fernanda de la Figuera.
The organizers of this mobilization against the trial of Fernanda de la Figuera in which the prosecutor asks for 4 years in jail for this female cannabis activist, not only want to charter buses that move activists from all over the City of Justice of Malaga Spain; They have also designed a manifesto of solidarity in which all legal proceedings against marijuana growers in Spain, which are thousands, are rejected.
Activists in favor of the legalization of cannabis in Spain demand legislation to regulate the cultivation of marijuana that protects all growers of marijuana for self-consumption that, like Fernanda de la Figuera, the veteran activist, feel unprotected in the face of police and judicial persecution to which they are subjected.
The latest Statistical Yearbook of the Ministry of Interior reflects the reality of cannabis cultivation in Spain. In 2017, seizures of marijuana plants increased in Spain by 55.2%, to exceed 1.12 million plants, and the seizure of cannabis seeds increased by 12.2%.
This female Spanish cannabis activist who faces 4 years in jail is very worried about the trial. Fernanda is considered a cannabis activist who does not do business with cannabis. For her, cannabis is a pleasure with great medicinal value. The activist shares the marijuana she cultivates with the other members of the “maríasxmaría” association and ensures that she has never dedicated herself to traffic.
Fernanda de la Figuera created the Ramón Santos Association of Cannabis Studies of Andalusia (ARSECA) in 1996 and organized in Córdoba in 1998 the Bella Flor, a cannabis association in which the first days of tasting and training on cannabis in Spain took place. She also created in Malaga the association “Marías por María”, which is a collective cultivation of cannabis for which she now faces the 4 years in prison requested by the prosecutor in the trial to be held on October 30. In 1995 and 2010, she was prosecuted for two other causes related to the cultivation of marijuana and she was acquitted on both occasions.
In the two previous trials that this female cannabis activist had for marijuana cultivation in 1995 and in 2010, she was acquitted. But this time the situation is different because the police seized more than 10 kilos of cannabis, which is the circumstance that aggravates the penalty of 4 years in prison requested by the prosecutor for this veteran activist. Fernanda explains that this time the production of marijuana has been greater because the crop was intended to supply an association formed by more than a hundred people who resorted to marijuana for medicinal purposes. Precisely for this reason the association is called “Marias por María”.
Fernanda began to be a cannabis activist in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when cannabis was banned and penalized in Spain. The cannabis activist saw marijuana for the first time when she was a child and her father, who was a military man, smoked kifi with friends. In 1978 she went to live in Malaga and fell in love with Andalusia and its climate, which is so good for cannabis cultivation.
Since that time she has struggled to have the freedom to grow marijuana in the same way she grows flowers or carrots. With this thought she founded in 1996 the Ramón Santos Association of Cannabis Studies of Andalusia (ARSECA), organized the first tasting and training days on the cultivation of marijuana in Spain and created the association “Marías por María” for the community cultivation of cannabis for people who need it for medicinal reasons. Precisely for this reason, this female cannabis activist will be faced on October 30 with the penalty of 4 years in prison that the prosecutor asks for her in Spain.
This female cannabis activist cannot understand why marijuana is so demonized after being used for its medicinal properties for thousands of years. She complains that people would not have to go to the pharmacy looking for opiates when with a few drops of cannabis tincture in the coffee you notice a great improvement in your ailments.
It is especially incomprehensible, according to this female cannabis activist, when Spain enjoys the best soil in Europe for the cultivation of cannabis and yet the plant has not yet been regularized, as it has already been done in other countries. Fernanda complains that politicians are not interested in fixing this issue because drugs give a lot of money. Fernanda has been in the European Parliament, in Congress and in the Senate accompanying cannabis experts exposing her great experience as a cannabis grower for self-consumption, with hardly any results.
