Rasquera’s mayor Bernat Pellisa signed a €1.3 million deal with a Barcelona cannabis association in March 2012, thereby allowing an area the size of ten football pitches to be used to plant marijuana by its 5,000 members.

"This is a chance to bring in money and create jobs," Pellisa, member of Catalan Republican Left ERC party told UK newspaper The Guardian at the time.

"The produce will only go to members of the association and it won't all be cannabis. There will be crop rotation with cereal and sugar beet."

But a court in the Catalan city of Tarragona has now revoked Rasquera’s agreements with the cannabis associations.

The judge overseeing the case alleged that, despite the tiny Catalan town’s financial problems and lack of work opportunities, the cannabis contracts weren't in the public interest.

“After waiting so long for the sentence to be passed, we were hoping that the judge’s arguments would be more balanced,” Pellisa told national daily El País.

“The judge’s sentence is arbitrary and groundless,” said Rasquera's town hall lawyer Martí Cànaves.

“The sentence is only six pages long. If the main reason the judge has revoked our appeal is because he argues it’s not in the public interest, he should outline in full the reasons why.”