Valencia Local Hero: Florencia Pollola, Of CBD Shop In Valencia At Mercado Central

Over the past year, Valencia has seen a trend in the sale and consumption of CBD, a non-psychoactive form of marijuana. Daniel Hazelhoff went to Mercado Central to meet CBD champion and evangelist Florencia Pollola of specialist CBD shop in Valencia Artemisa…

Cannabidiol or CBD can be smoked, consumed as an oil, used in body creams, and even vaporised. It is currently widely available throughout Valencia. But is it legal? Many new CBD shops in Valencia have opened providing customers with CBD products. For instance in Valencia alone, around 15 CBD stores have popped up within the past two years.

CBD consumption and sales lie in a current legal grey zone. It seems the product can not be sold for recreational consumption, so it is sold under many guises. For example, some CBD shops in Valencia sell the product as a “collectors’ item”, others as decor. 

But that’s part of the problem. CBD is not a recreational substance. In other words, it doesn’t get users ‘high’ or ‘stoned’. Herein lies one of the main problems with CBD. Public opinion. 

Benefits are medical, nothing to do with ‘getting high’

The product does come from the same plant as THC buds come from. However, its use has many medical and cosmetic benefits to skincare. Consumers report relief from pain, anxiety, depression and sleep disorders. In short, CBD contains no psychoactive components.

“The human body has an endocannabinoid system (ECS) that receives and translates signals from cannabinoids. The ECS helps regulate functions such as sleep, immune-system responses, and pain” according to a report done by Medical News Today.

The stigma lies in an antiquated perception of what certain substances mean culturally. It doesn’t help that establishments that once stood as headshops, spaces where smokers could buy their paraphernalia, have now become providers of CBD products. The legal grey zone in which these shops operate comes at a cost. The image of this medically beneficial product is tarnished. The inability to tax them properly causes problems for the state. And if the product doesn’t pass through any standardised quality control regulations, then how does the consumer know their product is as advertised?  

That being said, the medical benefits of CBD provide serious pain relief and anxiety relief to medical patients. This grey legal zone means medical patients end up going to these dispensaries for their pain relief, instead of receiving proper medical attention. 

The first CBD shop in El Mercado Central

In an attempt to get to know more about the current situation regarding CBD sales, customer satisfaction, and what this all means, we interviewed one of the owners of Artemisa, Florencia Pollola. Artemisa is one such CBD shop in Valencia – and the first CBD shop in El Mercado Central of Valencia. Truly a sign of changing times…

As I walked through the beautiful maze that is the bustling central market, I happened upon a pharmaceutical looking little Stall. The sign read Artemisa, and a small old man with what seemed to be arthritic hands was talking intently with the vendor. She was dressed in nurse scrubs and was speaking passionately to the man about her products. He seemed interested and walked away with two bags of pain-relieving medicine. On the other side of the sign were the initials “CBD”.

Surprising! A CBD store, in the middle of the central market? I asked her what this was all about, and how they were able to get their stall up at this location. 

Florencia Pollola is a 30-year-old Argentinian woman. Her straight black hair and professional demeanour contradict any and all preconceptions of what the owner of a CBD shop in Valencia would look like. And that’s entirely the point.

The road to CBD (not the central business district)…

Artemisa is her first entrepreneurial venture, along with her partner. She studied marketing in Argentina before finiahing her postgraduate degree in business administration in Australia. Her partner is an architect, and he designed the look and feel of the shop. Their background serves as a foundation for the scrupulous approach to the CBD world, and her attitude shows it. Calm and professional, ready to answer any question on the subject of CBD.

Artemisa stands in defiance of what one would expect a CBD shop in Valencia to be. It is clean-cut, and the medical presentation defines their own belief system towards CBD and its uses. A stark contrast to the head shops dotted around the centre of Valencia.  

“My partner and I are users of CBD,” says Florencia. “He is allergic to anti-inflammatory medication. One day we were reading an article on an Olympic surfer, who has the same allergy as my partner.

“It helped with his muscle pains and post-workout issues. So he tried it out, and it changed his life. I decided to give it a go to help me with some sleeping issues and anxiety, and it works phenomenally,” says Florencia.

CBD shops in Valencia need to be on a mission to explain

“We need to educate people about this,” she continues. “We thought the central market would be the perfect place for our store. It’s where the traditional meets the new. We want to help change the image of CBD. We want to show what it really is about.” 

Here we were, surrounded by the older, more traditional generation of Valencia, and there it was, change, right before my eyes. This older man was happy to purchase a product with such stigma associated with it. Encouraging signs for progress.

“We’ve been open for two months,” says Florencia. “We’re trying to promote it through social media and our website.” 

I ask about the legality of CBD.

A legal grey zone for a CBD shop in Valencia

“There is a legal grey zone we exist in,” says Florencia. “In Spain, consumption is not regulated yet, so the products we sell have a technical use. Oils, aromatherapy, external uses, massages, and other uses. Experts from Germany, The Netherlands, and Switzerland suggest sublingual (under the tongue) oil applications.”

So what about in Spain, I ask?

“In Spain, people still consider CBD to be a new product, so until it’s certified we can’t recommend what way you should use it,” she says with a frown.

And in what form do you usually sell your products, I ask?

“Mostly in oil form,” says Florencia, “people find that’s the easiest way to use the product. But we sell oil, creams, buds, and already ground buds. We sell balms for very localised pain relief. We also have a cosmetic line – evidence proves that CBD is very good for your skin, but most of our customers are here for the health benefits and pain relief.”

So what about your providers, I ask? If the legality of CBD stands in a sort of ‘grey zone’, what does that mean for your supply chain? That is to say, do things ever get… iffy?

Twisting road to market

“Most of our providers are from outside of Spain,” she says. “Places like Italy or Germany. We do have providers from Spain, but it works differently here. You can grow, and sell the plant, but you can’t extract the CBD,” says Florencia.

“So our product comes straight from plantations, where they grow and extract on location, legally, of course. Or they grow in Spain, send everything out of Spain, extract the CBD, and bring it back to Spain. It’s a bit silly,” she observes. 

So what do you think about regulation, I ask?

“It’s coming,” Florencia says emphatically. “And beyond that, we have seen the health benefits shown time and time again. For example, even La Organización Mundial de la Salud (WHO) has spoken about its benefits.”

From Covid to cure

So when did this all start for you?

“We began this project in April or May, last year, and because of paperwork and everything involved within making a business we opened the CBD shop on 1 December. During that time there were only four such stores in Valencia. Now there are 15.” 

So, having Artemisa in the middle of El Mercado Central, a place of high regard and tradition, did you find any resistance to your proposed business, and did anyone try to stop you?

“Yes, a bit of resistance,” Florencia admits. “But that’s the least of it, what we’ve really seen is people being surprised and engaging. Meanwhile the downside is there are some people who associate CBD with ‘joints’ or ‘dope’. I try to educate where I can, but hey, it’s a process.”

Sometimes we need to change our perspective on things, and it’s encouraging to see a CBD shop in Valencia right in the middle of El Mercado Central. Where the old meets the new. It speaks to Valencia’s ability to reinvent itself and to embrace the new.
• Artemisa, Plaça de la Ciutat de Burges, 46001, València, Valencia (Mercado Central); +34 609 85 28 16; @artemisa.boticacentral

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