Video summary
The speaker, representing the Spanish Society of Psychedelic Medicine (SEMSI) and the Foundation INO, outlines a strategic effort to build a legal and scientific ecosystem for psychedelic medicine in Spain. Although Spain already possesses certain favorable conditions, such as the national service covering ketamine treatment costs and a decriminalization policy similar to Portugal's regarding natural substances, the organizations have focused on policy advocacy since their founding in 2022 and 2023. Their primary goal has been to shift the field from underground activities to formal, regulated medical practice by engaging universities, political parties, and media outlets to create a supportive environment for future clinical programs.
A significant portion of their work involves integrating psychedelic science into academic and clinical settings. Starting in 2022, they organized university lectures featuring international experts like Dr. David Nutt, initially facing resistance but eventually gaining traction among students and faculty who are now becoming potential investigators. To overcome language barriers that prevent Spanish-speaking populations from accessing English-language information, the groups record these events for YouTube and actively connect Spanish hospitals with global clinical trials, assisting with complex bureaucratic documentation and patient recruitment through social media channels.
Beyond academic engagement, the organizations have successfully elevated the topic to a national level by organizing major conferences within the official Spanish College of Physicians and securing high-profile media coverage that kept psychedelics in the public eye for weeks. They also established direct communication lines with various political parties and even presented psychedelic science directly to the Spanish Parliament, though early meetings with the mental health commissioner were less successful due to her initial hesitation regarding pharmacological interventions. Despite these challenges, they view these interactions as crucial steps toward future reforms and have begun coordinating a unified protocol among multiple hospitals to generate robust scientific data for eventual authorization.
Looking ahead, the main priority is to launch a compassionate access program modeled after initiatives in Germany, targeting the Spanish Medicines Agency and political institutions with whom they have built relationships. The teams are currently sourcing GMP-certified psilocybin and preparing the necessary documentation for submission within the coming months. By unifying hospitals under a common protocol, they aim to produce substantial scientific results that will support their authorization requests, ultimately making safe and effective psychedelic therapies accessible to patients across Spain who meet specific clinical criteria.
Read the full video transcript
Thank you very much, Thaddeus. Thank you
everyone, of course, for being here.
It's a nice opportunity and I'm very
happy to be part of it.
We're going to have a very amazing day
and hopefully we'll go back home with a
lot of ideas, every one of us, to
implement in our own countries,
hopefully.
My role today is to provide you with a
little bit of what we have been doing in
Spain in the last few years and what
things can be extrapolated to probably
other countries and what can you bring
home and ideas that might be implemented
in your own countries. First of all,
just to mention
that I'm representing SEMSI, the Spanish
Society of Psychedelic Medicine, and
also I'm representing INO, the
Foundation INO, that Carlos is also with
us. This is one of the founders as well.
Those two societies were founded in the
year 2022 and 2023, but we have we are
lacking in Spain to have one very, very
old organization that is ICEERS
working in this fields in the year 2009,
which is a long time, and they have been
doing a lot of things, but we are now
more more focused in like the policy
advocacy. That is some work that ICEERS
was not doing so much and that's what
I'm going to be talking about today,
like the policy advocacy and all all the
work we have been doing to to well, to
build the ecosystem and to start moving
this field in Spain. First of all, just
to mention Spain has
like the well, the
policy in Spain is very similar to many
other countries.
The exceptions I would mention is that
thanks God we have like
the national service is
paying for the ketamine treatment, so
people have access to it for free, like
they can they can access like without
paying, which is nice for for a lot of
people having a little bit of an access
early access to the to the ketamine
programs without the burden or the
burden of paying a lot of money. And
also that the has
a policy that is very similar to
Portugal in terms that the most natural
substances are considered to be
decriminalized
in like when we talk about
judgment judgment or trial level. So
this is a very nice ecosystem for
underground activities happening and
there is a lot of expertise in the Spain
of underground retreats
and therapies. But of course we are here
to talk about the legal build up of all
this so we're going to be focusing more
on that. So the first thing that these
two organizations In
and Semci started pushing especially In
was the
pushing for trainings and events at
universities to bring this topic. So
this is started from the year 2022
and
we had the opportunity to bring David
Nutt so to give one conference at the
main Spanish university Universidad
Complutense and also we build up a group
of experts that are touring the
different Spanish
so we offer the universities to have a
class on this topic and at the beginning
it was very difficult because most of
them thought that this is not
interesting this no one wants to hear
about this but as the time goes by
things are starting to improve a lot and
now it's way easier to get into
universities. And this is a nice
opportunity because you can bring not
only students to learn about these
topics but also academics and teachers
at university that can be as well in the
future
principal investigator investigators of
different
studies related with psychedelics. So we
this this action was to build to start
building interest in the academic
community because in Spain was not very
updated with this topic and still
there's a lot of people very
disconnected with it but every year it's
it's becoming easier and easier which is
a good sign I think.
Another thing that I forgot to mention
is that this gives you the opportunity
also to to generate YouTube content and
in Spain for us is very important this
because there is a lot of information
about psychedelics in English, but there
is a big language barrier when it comes
to Spanish. Spanish people and people
from Latin America are not very friends
with
with the English language and this this
is very common for people not to learn
anything about this topic because it's
not in Spanish. So, we we are starting
to generate all that content by
recording the all these lectures and
publishing them on YouTube. Another
thing that that was working from the
beginning is like connecting
universities with different clinical
trials happening all around the world.
For for example, when we hear that one
pharmaceutical company is starting
a phase three trial and they're looking
for places to centers to to recruit and
to and to give the treatment, we connect
hospitals and professionals and
psychiatrists with these companies and
we intermediate providing all the
support and all the documentation that
is needed for these centers to be able
to access these opportunities and to
become official centers for these for
these studies. So, we we help with
databasing, we contact hospitals to
offer them the possibility of of
connecting with these companies and
bringing the clinical trials to them.
And we support a lot with documentation
because these bureaucratic processes are
very long and support is very important.
Also, a very important thing is that we
support as well when it comes to a
recruitment. Sometimes and well, most of
the times it's very difficult to recruit
people because they have like these very
specific criteria, which is not very
easy to fulfill. But thanks God having
this
having the support of these
organizations as SEMCI and and INO, we
are able to to make this make it much
easier. We use social networks, we use
like all kind of
media channels in order to get to the
people that is in need of these
therapies for them to to lead them to
these to these studies.
Okay, another very successful strategy
quite laborious with requires a lot of
work but this is being so successful so
far is the organization organizing big
conferences. This is the example of
Symposium 2025 that was organized by by
Fundacion Inno and it was a three-day
conference
that was organized specifically in the
Spanish College of Physicians which the
most important institution in Spain when
it comes to medicine. The most official
institution all the clinical all the
doctors in Spain
are members of this organization and
this organization that like provides all
the ruling for the doctors in Spain. So
we specific specifically hired this
place that is also very beautiful as you
can see to organize this this big event.
So this was a way to bring the
Oh my god.
Yeah. Yeah. So so the idea was just to
to bring to bring this topic to the
noses of all the Spanish doctors. So
they was not it was not possible for
them to to to to skip it and also to
provide a lot to to generate a lot of
content for social media for YouTube
channel in Spanish and also to feed the
Spanish media with the topic of
psychedelics. So we bring David so we
bring many international speakers and we
offer them to the different Spanish
media so they gave interviews that were
headlines in most of the big Spanish
media outlets newspapers TV channels
everything. So this topic for a few
weeks was was trending in all in all the
Spanish media. Next next one please.
In parallel to this we started
contacting different different political
parties and offering the the health
commission of the different political
parties to provide them with information
of this
this new development of mental health
that can be extremely effective and
extremely important for the future of
mental health in Spain. So, we had brief
meetings with different political
parties
and provide them with documentation with
science and everything that was needed
for them in order to defend these topics
at the national Congress
if they were interested in it, of
course. I mean, the idea is just to have
this topic on the table of all the
political parties so they know this
exists. Next next one.
So, what
No, I'm finishing. I'm finishing, yeah.
It's just
this is probably the the biggest event
that we have had so far and this was
right after like talking with a few
political parties. We um
emailed the the president of the Spanish
national Parliament and offer her to
organize a national an event to present
the psychedelic science at the Spanish
national Parliament, which is something
that we didn't know it existed, but the
political parties told us that we were
able to request this possibility and if
we were lucky enough, they will accept
it and thanks thankfully they did. So,
we had this opportunity to present the
topic in a during an entire morning. So,
we had there like four or five hours to
provide different lectures in science,
in policy, in developments in other
countries. We invited people from
Germany, from United States, from
different places with different
regulatory developments and this was
offered to all the Spanish MPs, all the
members of the Spanish Parliament. We
were emailing them
day after day many times. I mean, I I
think they hate us probably. I mean,
because we we send them like million
times, but the important thing is that
that we had representation from most of
the important political parties. They we
have at least one representative and a
lot of people from the civil society and
especially from the health
bosses and and chiefs of service from
different Spanish hospitals were also
invited to attend. So, it was it was a
very important event and thankfully it
also had a nice impact on on media. So,
we had articles being published in
different newspapers. We have been
contacting newspapers and all the
different media outlets using also a
communication agency that we hired
specifically
for symposium and also for for this
event.
Next one, please.
And we use this event as a way to
contact the Spanish mental health
commissioner that is the person in
charge of all the mental health issues
in Spain and offer her all the support
and all the
all the information and signs that they
might need in order to push any reform
in this topic in Spain. It was not a
very successful
meeting unfortunately because
she was at the beginning not very
interested in any kind of
pharmacological intervention so far even
though this pharmacological intervention
is not similar to any other in the in
the past but well, it was at least a
beginning and opening of this channel of
communication that we're going to be
using in the in the future.
Next slide, please.
And this is the last one.
And now just to conclude, we are now
working towards using all these we have
that have been doing in the last years
all this building of the momentum all
these showing of this topic to all the
media and all the Spanish society and
all the scientific societies and all the
politicians to work towards
compassionate program in the way of
Germany and other countries. A program
that is open for for all the
all the patients that fulfill the
criteria by
contacting and by targeting mostly the
Spanish
medicines agency and also the different
political parties that we have already
built a little bit of a relationship
through all these previous events and
all these scientific organizations that
we have been also working with. And this
is now our our main
priority. We're working on
on finding like sources for psilocybin
GMP. We're working on the documentation
and we're going to be targeting in the
next few months and hopefully I hope
that is going to be a successful but
we're going to be targeting the
different
political institutions but mostly the
Spanish medicines agency that probably
is the only one that can give the okay
that we need for for a starting them.
And one last thing,
very important idea from Carlos was
connecting
a lot of hospitals in Spain and putting
all them together to work with a common
protocol so everyone can can express the
interest in
pursuing this this work with with
psilocybin using the same protocol and
this way we can build a lot of
scientific results as well during the
program and having like more more
background in
information that we need for for our
authorization in the future hopefully.
Thank you very much.
>> [applause]
>> Sorry.