This year was the most successful ever with attendance figures over the 3 day event, hosting 25,000 people from 50 different nationalities, over 500 companies, 5000 accredited professionals and 2400 workers, to mostly make it all work! 

This year is no different. Spannabis is now the equivalent of… the World Series of Weed,… the best of the Concentrates, and the Cannabis TOP CHEF of Edibles. There can be no doubt that this was the most successful Spannabis ever, and I bet they could have added a whole another day and another 100 exhibitors if they wanted. 

The actual Spannabis event is now just the entree to a multi-course, Barcelona Cannabis Buffet of Bad Ass. 

This year it opened on Monday with The Dab-a-Doo, followed by The Spanish Champions Cup, The Squash Off, The Masters of Rosin, The Organic Cup, The Crunch N Roll Cup and of course ending the week Friday, Sat and Sunday with Spannabis.

The co-star just prior to Spannabis is the ICBC Event. This year featured over 40 speakers speaking to throngs of Cannabis Industry Entrepreneurs and then throwing a killer party afterwards!

This year’s ICBC lineup had three sessions that really caught my attention. A morning session on “Innovation” following the afternoon session “Media and Marketing in The Cannabis Space” with Journalist, Michael Knodt and CIO of ISPIRE, Luna Stower on an entertaining panel.

The day closed with a session on “Advances in Cannabis Production Methods” that was being hosted by Marcus Richardson aka BUBBLEMAN!

The killer party afterwards might have possibly had a side twist to it this year, after the truly amazing story of what happened with last year's main sponsor. Many people know about the “JUICY FIELDS” story here in Europe, but I have found that surprisingly few have heard the story in North America. 

Here’s the basics: The players include a Fake Prince, Two Fake Counts, money laundering and we hear of billions of dollars involved and a closing event with a couple of Lamborghini’s at the ICBC After Party last year!

The scoop on this whole SCAM is covered in detail and I’m going to redirect you to this outstanding podcast that will give you all the details. It’s a very fascinating and sad cautionary reminder of the old saying “If it sounds too good to be true…” https://www.dw.com/en/cannabis-cowboys/program-62614055

CUP COMPS 

This year, the CUP competition festivities started early on Monday, with Mila Jansen, affectionately known as 

The Hash Queen and creator of the Pollinator machine. She held her incredibly popular “Dab-a-Doo” event at the RDM Cannabis Club. Her Dab-a-doo events have been on a true World tour over the last year, traveling to and dabbing away in Chile, Uruguay and Mexico, in addition to her regular events in Amsterdam and Barcelona. 

The “Dab-a-Doo” is the first ever professional cannabis competition that is dedicated exclusively to concentrates and extracts, such as dry sift, dabs, wax, oil and budder among others. Competitors from around the globe treasure a trophy from this event like Gold.

This year’s event in Barcelona was completely off the hook. The house was PACKED early with Cannabis VIP’s including the Dank Duchess herself and dabbing experts from around the globe. It was a real honor to attend and It was truly an enlightening experience to FEEL the vibe in that club.

Everyone was dialed in and laser focused on identifying the very best concentrates in Spain while at the same time ALL paying respect to the delightful Hash Queen. It’s a love fest! Everyone loves this lady so much and the fact that she is also such a powerful OG in the industry, makes it that much more fun. 

When it was all done, I felt like we were all on the precipice of a deciding revolution. No more games. These were all PROFESSIONALS working with intensity and focus. It was impressive as hell.

Tuesday

Next thing you know, it was TUESDAY and the first day for me to really get out and get busy shooting and smoking some of the premium Spanish cannabis.

“I Got A BLACK MAGIC WOMAN, MARKER…” Carlos Santana

First stop that night was over at Terp’s Army. A true Who’s Who of Cannabis VIP’s were dug in over there and as soon as I walked through the door I started to hear about the OZARK 17. She was on the menu with a couple of her sisters Ozark 16, and 15.

“17 is the Gassy one” I was told, so I grabbed a fat bud from it along with another bud called Starburst that I discovered while doing my own interpening. Don’t tell the gang but… the Starburst was definitely, unexplainably juicy and would have been my first pick off the board.

It was during this process, when I suddenly remembered that I had a bundle of KEY FOBS from previous years. I had been there at Terps Army in 2022 and I wondered if I had left any credits in my account?

Well after going through ALL of my fobs, I later found out that Terps Army had switched to the modern system. NO FOBS… but I still had 60 EUROS on my account! Dude! It was like finding money on the street. 

I ran into another long-time Spannabis Visitor who also had the same problem I had… A pocket full of FOBS, and no idea where they belonged. After 5 minutes, we had a table with 5 others with the same problem. 

When you’re a visitor here during Spannabis week, it’s not out of the ordinary for you to visit 2,3,4 or 5 different spots in a night. Each of these clubs has its own system. Many have a new, updated system that keeps tabs, just using your name and id. Many still use this FOB system. SO we all agreed that night that from now on, we would all start to carry a small “black magic marker” with us when we go out to the new clubs, and ID the FOBS immediately upon receipt. If you wait till the morning, you will NOT remember WHICH FOB is WHICH. You just won’t. “Get a Black magic marker”, Great tip for everyone.

Other great followup cannabis clubs Tuesday night included: HQ (still one of my favorites) and The Plug (always a winner), and my first visit to Dank of England, where I was headed to party later that week. 

Wednesday

Wednesday was a wonderfully wild day that included a stoney walk through one of the most popular parks in Spain, Park Güell. Now what I did know about this park is that it was a World Heritage of UNESCO and it was built by GAUDI, the architect that had built the famous “Sagrada Familia Basilica”. It is a truly amazing park with landscape, integrated with a maze full of trails, courses, walls and bridges… and some steep stairs which was NOT part of my plan. 

Although Barcelona is a walking town, and yes, Taxi’s are all over I still managed to log on my Apple Watch, 18,420 steps on my first days.

My legs already felt like two pieces of Iron when we started walking up the park stairs. Johnathan Hirsch, VP of marketing from Mera Cannabis in Canada, joked that they should install some heart defibrillators along the pathway… It’s not a bad idea. 

Nevertheless, we strolled the park and connected with our friend Lance Lambert with his crew, from TerpLok Bags. We all checked out the history and the architectural majesty while enjoying the amazing views of the city, from the park's premium location.

With our culture cache filled, it was time to find some more premium buds! 

Wednesday, March 8th, as it turned out, was “Women’s International Day”. That meant that there were protest marches going on, in different parts of the city and it was extremely tough to make it to many spots with the roads blocked off… and that meant MORE WALKING.

Still, I totally scored in making it over to one of the very first clubs I had ever visited here “CHOKO”. This was a great spot for my first meeting with the other Captain, a gentleman I was going to have the honor to share covering Spannabis with this year. Grant Saxena.

This impressive young man’s story… is detailed on https://www.linkedin.com/in/grant-saxena. The 30 second version is brilliant… Harvard, Oxford, Stanford educated, Westpoint graduate, Doctorate’s & PHD’s all over the place. Super creative dude who is a talented DJ and also acted as one of the Global Leaders for Burning Man… He’s a Certified Nevada Veterans Advocate (#758) providing: pro-bono, 1 on 1 support for disabled veterans during transitions. 

We had a great time with the whole place practically to ourselves and I warned him. “Enjoy this quiet because you won’t see it again for a while. Chaos was about to begin”.

BTW - CHOKO also had what urned out to be one of the Cannabis Bud HIGH-lights of the trip… RAINBOW CHIP.

Thursday

Thursday the 9th, was the day of Bobby West’s (Uncle Stoner) Squash Off. Believe it or not, this is the 43rd Squash Off event, and the first one in Barcelona, at the Wizards Cannabis Club.

This is a unique competition in several ways as it’s a live, interactive and real time competition. It’s also a 100% transparent event to all, in that decisions by the judges, in what they see and their critique is done in front of a live audience. Flowers are passed to the judges for a visual and Terpene analysis, followed by a Microscopic analysis… (provided by me this year) and then 5 grams of the flower is SQUASHED in a Rosin Tech Press. The results are then RE-ANALYZED for the POST PRESS terpene profile. Then the judges smoke it and give it a final score. That's it!

Talk about a powerhouse team of judges!:

Award winning breeder, grower, podcaster James Loud of Denmark, Copenhagen 

growing legend Cutter Mahri,

“The Queen of Hash” Mila Jansen and 

Author/ Professional Interpener - yours truly…Captain Hooter!

I don’t want to brag but I did nail all the final winners, in their final order, perfectly! The winning flower was called “ PURPLE GLAM” and you can see why. She was a stunning bud, a delightful dab and a worthy winner.

I wrapped up my evening by spending a bit more time with Grant, introducing him to some of the industry legends that were there for the event. 

It was apparent immediately, that this Dude had skills, SUPER SKILLS, but in this particular space and time, he was the student and I was happy to help educate, the best I could. 

Since we both had a military background, I could give him as much basic intel as I could that evening and then on Friday we would meet up again and attack SPANNABIS straight on. 

Friday

Friday was a fully planned, HUGE Day of events as it was the opening day for Spannabis and the opening day for me being a Judge at the “Munch and Roll Cup”. 

I had an interesting wake and bake event in the AM and a killer after party dialed in, with the crew from Grove Bags / Terploc, over at the Dank of England club that evening. That was one of the top after party events everyone was talking about that also hosted Ed Rosenthal, Luna Stower and many other VIP’s attending. I just needed to fit it all in. 

I’d coordinated with Ragnar, so that we were going to try to get over to the event fairly early, gulping down some coffee while I finished editing some micro-shots of the previous day’s buds. Then, I headed back over to the beautifully and recently renovated Choko BCN, for an invitation only, Wake and Bake event with French Touch Seeds. I LOVED some of these beautiful French discoveries. I was there for over an hour, I spoke ZERO French, had an awesome time, smoked some beautiful buds and we all got along perfectly. 

THE BIG SHOW

Once we arrived at Spannabis, I had to find my way over to the PRESS window to pick up my credentials, and at THE MOMENT that I was ready to walk away after receiving my wristband to enter the event, GRANT showed up at the window. We had not set an exact time the night before but Dude, the odds of him being there at that exact moment were crazy high, a bit of DESTINY”!

The place was jammed and having been an exhibitor a couple of years ago and even last year attending, I immediately knew the count was really high with first day arrivals... 

Ragnar, my longtime friend and photographer for the day and I led the way through the first main hall’s exhibitors with Grant who joined us but then promptly lost us, in that first 15 minutes. 

In the back of my mind, I was thinking that this was a good thing because Ragnar and I had seen most of these exhibitors many times before, we were more likely to walk by some exhibits that he might need to see. All I can tell you for sure, is that some of the exhibit tents had no circulation and were super hot and uncomfortable, not to mention it was PACKED with attendees. 

This year was much like the prior events except that there was a definite increase in the number of CBD and lighting companies. Seed companies still dominate the overall booth density.

CBD is definitely getting some fresh legs and there's a smokable sativa-ish hemp that was going around that seemed to be a step up from previous samples I’ve seen. Retail shops like Tom Hemp’s are doing a bang up business and they are blending/crossing the lines. Lots of people talking about it, lot’s of exhibitors. CBD is still not my thing, unless its in a combination dab. That’s just me. 

After a few hours, I felt like I had been in a sauna, and Rag and I decided to go grab some food at the beach and cool off. It took us almost 20 minutes to walk from the front door of the main hall to the exit. I worked in the meetings and events industry for almost 30 years, I remember thinking that If this event was taking place anywhere in North America, a fire marshal would have shut it down for sure.

After a fantastic late lunch / early dinner beachside at SALAMANCA, we parted ways and I went to get ready for the evening's festivities. My first stop was over to the CRTFD Cannabis club to pick up the judges package for the “CRUNCH N ROLL CUP”.

25 EDIBLES in 36 HOURS 

I had absolutely no idea what I was going to receive once I entered the club. I knew it was a competition that included edibles AND pre-rolls, so I was really prepared for everything and anything.

I was slightly depressed when I was informed that I was only going to be judging edibles but then only to become thrilled when I saw that there were 25 entries! There were some beautiful, highly refined entries I could see right off the bat, including a chocolate infused cigar that came in it’s own humidor. The cup was broken down into categories… Pre-rolls, Gummies, Sweets, Baked, Chocolate, Sauces and Drinks.

One of the best parts of Spannabis is that one party generally leads to another event or party and then onto another. This is a super fun city that likes to stay up late. It seems most dinner restaurants are just getting going around 8:30pm. Many nightclubs go till the sun comes up.

Saturday 

I woke up the next morning with the first hangover I’ve had since… LAST YEAR HERE drinking deceptively dangerous sangria’s. Once alive and focused, the reality of the task ahead of me became clear. I had 25 edibles that I needed to review, and I only had 36 hours before I had to get on a plane back to Amsterdam… and still be walking… This was going to take some endurance and planning.

After setting up a reasonable pacing schedule that I thought would allow me to fairly judge these tasty morsels and still be somewhat functional, I photographed them all and got busy MUNCHING. I began with all the chilled goodies so I could go mobile with the rest. I had extra goodies to share. But first, I needed to make a second run at Spannabis.

It was Saturday, logically the biggest day, yet the Clement Niel, 80 MG THC Chocolate and accompanying Baked Cookie were very persistent in convincing me that I HAD to go and really try to enjoy Spannabis the way I always had before. First I had to learn to appreciate life a bit more. So I tested another edible…

After another Uber failed, I hailed a taxi. A kind looking man in his 60’s understood me when I said “Spannabis'' and headed off in the right direction. As I was still buckling up my seatbelt, he drove through his first red light. I didn’t think too much about it as there was no imminent cross traffic and I must have thought “he’s local” so he probably knows if it's cool to do that or not. 

Then two blocks later he did it again. Two cars, blowing their horns at us, and your boy doesn’t flinch an inch. We cruise safely the rest of the way until a block before the Spannabis entrance when Steve McQueen flies thru a freshly turned red with three lanes of honking death heading straight for me. Thankfully, realizing all of our imminent deaths, Jason Stratham slams on the brakes, dead center of the intersection, and starts yelling at the other cars through the window. We had stopped traffic completely for a good 15-30 seconds at least, but somehow it seemed like 1/2 hour before he decided to roll on through his still red light.

That was how I arrived on Saturday… and I couldn’t have cared less. I rolled out of that cab like I was arriving at the Oscars. Thank You Clement Niel Cookie & Chocolate edible. You set me right up!

My Spannabis wristband allowed me to walk right into the event and right into another packed house. It was a warm day, but inside a few of the exhibit tents the temperatures were crazy high again. 

I had to go in and out several times because it was so packed or too hot to hang. On one of the visits outside I noticed that many groups had created makeshift hangout spots on the ground leading up to and around the exit area. If there was a seating area or tables, there were not enough of them. People eventually were spread out all over. I made it through the last tent and found my way to a wall seat on a building outside the exit. I sat down and watched sad, hot and frustrated people leaving the event!

This wonderful event needs to have a LOT more space; reorganize the layout and space assignments, add appropriate seating options and space and layout safely for exit and entrance flow. As my Grandma used to say “Heaven forbid something bad should happen…” Man if somebody dropped a dab torch or something, with the place packed so tight? No Bueno. 

Fun Stuff 

Ok, enough of that stuff. Let's get back to the fun stuff. I still had a bag of edibles to get through and the clock was ticking. I connected back with Grant and soon found myself sitting with London Niro from the Dank Hour Panel Podcast. See this is the the true value of events like these. After 5 minutes, we were linked and on the same page and he WILL be the very next podcast on Wake and Bake with ME.

That evening, I had a chance to sample all the rest of my scheduled edibles, and I was able to get additional feedback from London and Grant and their guests. The evening was fantastic and just like that, it was time to start preparing for my return flight.

I spent at least an hour going through all of my pants and jackets, shaking everything out to make sure I wasn’t going to have any surprises at Security at the airport the next day. GENERALLY, the 5-0 will just confiscate your goodies, but I have heard of other scenarios that were not as simple, so I won’t take that chance for just being careless. I found a beautiful joint during my last pass and was able to have a wonderful goodnight puff to end this awesome day.

Overall, it was another almost surreal experience attending Spannabis, but I have to say that I think they could do a MUCH BETTER JOB in a Larger space. OR if you/we are stuck here, then some rearranging is needed for sure. Move the F&B or redesign the exhibit floors but make it safe and an enjoyable experience for everyone. 

I’ve now had the opportunity to visit this amazing event several times as a guest, once as an exhibitor and once as a member of the press. The information, connections and collaborations I have made here over the years have all proved to be priceless to me. I’ll look forward to an even better show next year and hope you’ll join me!

Sincerely, 

The Captain….