California's Medical-Marijuana Dispensaries Face Crackdown

Four California-based U.S. attorneys are targeting medical-marijuana dispensaries, growers and delivery services that they say are breaking state and federal laws

Jebb Harris / The Orange County Register / Zumapress / Corbis

When Richard Kearns wakes up each morning, he vomits. A former university professor who was diagnosed with AIDS 30 years ago, Kearns, 60, resides in a Los Angeles assisted-living facility and relies on marijuana, which he gets from local dispensaries, to manage the pain, anxiety and intense nausea that would otherwise prevent him from being able to keep down the pills he also takes daily. Now those dispensaries are in danger of being shut down.

Before 1996, Kearns used to buy the drug off the streets. That year, California voters passed Proposition 215, making it the first state in the U.S. to effectively legalize the medicinal use of marijuana. Now, however, four California-based U.S. attorneys have announced their intent to prosecute the medical-marijuana dispensaries, growers and delivery services that are breaking state and federal laws. What constitutes violations of law, however, is murky — and may put the very existence of the dispensaries at risk. (See photos of a giant marijuana plantation discovered in Mexico.)

According to Thom Mrozek, spokesman for the U.S. attorney in the Central District of California, which includes Los Angeles, Orange County, Riverside County and the Inland Empire, all dispensaries in the state are illegal. "California law says that it's essentially O.K. to grow, have and transport marijuana if you're a patient authorized by a doctor or if you're the patient's primary caregiver and if you're providing the marijuana not for profit," Mrozek says. "Stores are violating California law because they're operating at a profit and they're not a primary caregiver. It's very clearly laid out."

But what about patients who can't grow marijuana and don't have caregivers who can grow the plant — people like Kearns? How they are supposed to get the substance isn't clear at all. The law doesn't say, and it's largely been up to local municipalities in California to govern the issue. This has resulted in a patchwork of different approaches across the state and general confusion over what's legal and what's not.

The California Medical Association (CMA) has weighed in, seeking both clarity and protection for doctors. On Monday, Oct. 17, it called for the legalization and regulation of marijuana. "[California] decriminalized medical use, yet if a physician recommends it to a patient, we are violating federal law," Dr. James Hay, president-elect of the CMA told ABC News. The group wants legalization so that more research can be done on marijuana's health effects. "If we don't know what's in it, we can't do any kind of scientific evaluation," Hay said. (Want more crime in your city? Close your local marijuana dispensary.)

President Obama pledged not to go after medical-marijuana growers and dispensers when he took office in 2009. So there is some consternation over why the federal government is now seriously targeting them. Indeed, the U.S. attorneys have threatened to seize the assets of some landlords who rent to for-profit dispensaries. "The government is broke and they're scrambling for money," speculates a Los Angeles dispensary manager, who requested anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak on behalf of his employer. "[Medical marijuana] has been an untapped source of money for them. Now they're coming to get their cut." Two weeks ago, Harborside Health Center, an Oakland-based dispensary said it was told it wouldn't be allowed to deduct business expenses like rent, interest, insurance and payroll and that it owed $2.5 million in back taxes to the IRS.

All of this leaves medical-marijuana users uneasy about the future. "They offer clean medicine," Kearns says of the dispensaries he visits. "If I had to go to the street, I'm in a situation where I'm completely vulnerable to impure medicine." The Drug Policy Alliance, a national marijuana-legalization advocacy group, is also concerned. "You can't say that medical marijuana is legal in general but not provide the legal means to access it," says Stephen Gutwillig, who oversees the organization's work in California. "There's supposed to be a statewide access system, but there isn't one."

Sensible regulation of medical-marijuana access is the key to maintaining harmony between patients who rely on the drug and the rest of society, according to Gutwillig. "It's not rocket science," he says, pointing to Northern California's Mendocino County as a success story. "Every plant is tagged and zip-tied and tracked," he says of the procedure in place in Mendocino. "They make sure every plant has some relationship to a particular dispensary to make sure the cultivator is producing for the medical-marijuana system and not for the underground recreational market."

However, step foot in certain neighborhoods of Los Angeles and it's a very different scene. In touristy parts of Venice Beach, medical marijuana is hawked with as much vigor as tattoos, sunglasses and services like Botox. In fact, one storefront offers medical-marijuana evaluations by doctors and "Botox by the Beach" under the same roof.(See photos of trouble ahead for medical marijuana in California.)

"I was walking on the [Venice Beach] boardwalk and I was approached by a guy in a white coat who said, 'Get your medical-marijuana card,'" says Justin (not his real name). "Within 30 minutes, I got a document that says I can buy from dispensaries. I don't have a California ID. I live in Florida." The college student was standing on the sidewalk holding a bag of so-called edibles — lollipops, brownies and the like — items he says may help with the back pain he suffers as a result of being hit by a car.

Yet Justin admits the pain wasn't his only reason for making his purchase. "I spent $40 and I got 80% edibles. That's going to get me really, really high," the 20-year-old says, adding that he's ambivalent about his own marijuana use. "It's really a love-hate relationship with marijuana," he says. "In a lot of different ways, I'm still figuring it out."

Watch TIME's video "An L.A. Medical Marijuana Odyssey."

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Blacklisted: U.S.-Russia Diplomacy's Latest Downturn

In the greenroom of a television studio last week, Vladimir Churov, Russia's top elections official and an old friend of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, told me about his vacation in the U.S. a few years back. His fondest memory was a jaunt he took to El Paso, Texas, where he walked across the border into Mexico. Coming back, he says, a U.S. border guard gave him a pleasant welcome, while some of the darker-skinned travelers were held back and searched. "It was the first time in my life I really felt like a white man," Churov beamed. But the smile soon faded from his face. No more U.S. border guards would be letting him pass, he told me, because he is on a State Department blacklist. "We're all on there," he said, "even Putin."

This, of course, wasn't true. Putin has not been banned from traveling to the U.S. and neither has Churov. But his belief in the blacklist is not just paranoia — it is a sign of the times. In July, the U.S. tried out a new diplomatic weapon against Russia that has since upended their relationship. It put together a list of about 60 unnamed Russian officials linked to a specific rights violation — the jailing and death of an anticorruption crusader named Sergei Magnitsky — and it banned those officials from traveling to the U.S. On Saturday came Russia's tit-for-tat response. In a statement, the Foreign Ministry said it has banned a group of American officials from entering Russia because of their alleged involvement in "high-profile crimes." The list, it warned, would be expanded if the U.S. "went the road of a visa confrontation." (Read about Putin's political comeback.)

The disturbing thing about the Russian ban is its potential scope, which is far broader than the U.S. blacklist. According to the Foreign Ministry's statement, it is meant as retribution for a laundry list of crimes, including the death of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, the "torture and humiliation" of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, and the "kidnapping and humiliation" of Russians standing trial in the U.S. So in theory, the Russian ban could apply to a huge cross section of the Washington establishment. That is supposed to be the crafty part. Both in the Russian and American cases, the names on the list are not disclosed. "You can imagine what this does to someone psychologically," a senior Western diplomat explained to me recently. "They think, 'Well, I wasn't involved in Magnitsky's death. But I was at a meeting once where it was discussed. So could I be on the list too?'" Nobody knows. And the only way to find out is by applying for a visa.

It is a clever tactic, but it seems to have encouraged the Russian government to close ranks around its own. Churov, having finished his El Paso story in the greenroom, proceeded to tape a talk show that evening in which the blacklist came up again. His response was a minor tantrum. "I think that including me on such lists is a great honor," Churov said. "It shows the stupidity of those who compile such lists." The only way he would now agree to travel to the U.S. would be if Senator Benjamin Cardin, the Maryland Democrat who drafted the blacklist, sends him a personal invitation. "I will not consider an invitation from any other government body," Churov said. (Read about a Russian spy ring.)

On Friday night, when I reached Cardin for a response, he said he found the outburst "puzzling." The American blacklist only includes three very specific groups of officials: those who were involved in the $230 million tax fraud that Magnitsky uncovered in 2009, those who put him in jail and kept him there without trial, and those who refused to give him medical treatment, which led to his excruciating death in a prison cell. Cardin said that election officials like Churov obviously had nothing to do with that, and neither did Putin.

But Churov's remarks suggest that many in Russia's political elite feel slighted by the American blacklist. His response is to treat the blacklist as "some badge of honor instead of a badge of shame," Cardin says. "He is trying, in a way, to give credibility to those who violated basic human rights."

That is not the effect the U.S. had intended. The goal of the list was to push the Russian government to seek justice for Magnitsky's death, and amid the foreign pressure, numerous investigations have indeed been opened. About two dozen officials linked to the Magnitsky case have already been fired, and various criminal probes are ongoing. But this has not satisfied the U.S. lawmakers. In their view, the Russian response has been too slow and too lenient, and the people facing charges in Russia, including two prison doctors, are only scapegoats meant to let their bosses off the hook.

"To me it's similar to some of the international efforts to hold people criminally responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity," Cardin told me. "These are cases when there is an ineffective internal operation to deal with it. So you have to look at international ways, to make it clear that that kind of conduct will be not tolerated by the international community."

To this end, the Canadian and the European parliaments have followed the U.S. example, voting to ban dozens of officials implicated in the Magnitsky case. Some of their foreign bank accounts have also been frozen, and Cardin has pushed for their parents, children and spouses to be banned as well. For the Russians, that has started to feel like a diplomatic lynching, which they say violates the presumption of innocence. "They are trying to decide for us who is guilty," Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday. "Unfortunately, there are rules in this genre," he added. "An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth."

See Putin as TIME's Person of the Year in 2007.

See photos of a Kremlin youth camp.

Italy: Did a Hospital Turn Away a Lesbian Blood Donor?

A crowd gathers at a gay-pride event in Rome on June 11, 2011. Gay-rights activists say that homosexuality should not be a reason to exclude someone from donating blood

This post is in partnership with Worldcrunch, a new global-news site that translates stories of note in foreign languages into English. The article below was originally published in La Stampa.

Donating blood is one more civic act that Italian gay-rights activists now say must be explicitly protected by law. The latest controversy comes after a woman in Rome says she was not allowed to give blood at one of the city's largest hospitals because she is a lesbian.

The 39-year-old accounting-firm employee, referred to as Angela, says she was told by a hospital official at Policlinico Umberto I that she is "considered at risk" because of her personal life. The woman says she has had a monogamous relationship with another woman for more than the 120 days required to exclude the risk of sexually transmitted diseases. (See why the U.K. lifted its ban on gay men donating blood.)

"There is no law that bans homosexuals from donating blood," said Gabriella Girelli, director of the blood-transfusion center at Umberto I. "In general, at-risk people cannot do it. It's up to the examining doctor to determine the risk on the base of the information provided."

Roberto Stocco, spokesman for the Rome chapter of the Arcigay association, says denying someone the possibility to donate blood is a violation of Italian law. He adds that he is skeptical about Girelli's claim that she cannot refer to the specifics of the case to protect patient privacy.

"It is an exercise in stupidity," says Ivan Scalfarotto, an official for the opposition Democratic Party. "Since AIDS is transmitted via blood and sperm, lesbians are considered not at risk." (See photos of World AIDS Day in Zimbabwe.)

This is not the first time this issue has come to the fore in Italy, with similar denials in the northern city of Pordenone in 2007 and Milan in 2010. Another opposition politician and activist, Paola Concia, says she will take the issue to Parliament.

"We want to put it down by law that homosexuality is not an element that should exclude someone from donating blood," she says. "Some institutes use 'safety' to hide their anti-gay prejudices, forgetting the real risk of 9 million straight Italian men who frequent prostitutes."

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Biggest Strike Yet Brings Greece to a Standstill

Protesters throw fire bombs at riot police as they demonstrate in front of the Greek parliament in Athens on October 19, 2011.

Angelos Tzortzinis / AFP / Getty Images

The 48-hour walkout by Greek workers on Wednesday and Thursday has been dubbed "the mother of all strikes" by leading Greek daily Ta Nea. The biggest strikes since the debt crisis began in the country almost two years ago saw tens of thousands of protesters ringing parliament on Wednesday as part of massive demonstrations against the latest raft of austerity measures — measures that parliament is expected to pass into law on Thursday. The Greek parliament approved the measures in principle on Wednesday despite the protests outside.

By late afternoon, the largely peaceful rally had devolved into street fights between riot police and hooded youths. One demonstrator, Evangelia Trifona, sat on the steps of a store with smashed windows, her eyes red and watery from tear gas. (See TIME's photo-essay "Protesters Bring Athens to a Halt.")

Trifona, a 59-year-old housewife, started venturing to demonstrations a couple of months ago, after she stopped believing that the austerity measures were going to led anywhere good. A few months ago, her husband, a retired schoolteacher, saw his pension cut by a third. Then the restaurant they ran in Crete failed. Now they can no longer pay their mortgage. She's afraid she and her husband are going to be homeless.

"I'm coming back tomorrow," she said, coughing into a handkerchief. "I want someone to hear me, to know I exist. I feel like no one in parliament is listening to me or cares about me." (See TIME's photo-essay "Outrage in Athens.")

The strikes shuttered government offices, public services, shops and even bakeries. Taxi drivers walked off the job, as did air-traffic controllers (though they shortened their work stoppage from 48 hours to 12). Hundreds of riot police have cordoned off the area around parliament, the target of Greeks' anger over new measures that include further salary and job cuts in the public sector, a controversial new property tax, and slashes to pensions.

The European Union, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank — a group which Greeks call the "troika" — say Greece must adopt even harsher austerity measures to keep receiving billions in international bailout loans. Without those loans, the country would not be able to pay its bills and would default on its massive sovereign debt, which is now 162% of gross domestic product. Euro-zone leaders are set to discuss the debt crisis at a summit on Oct. 23. They are maneuvering to set up a rescue agreement that will find new ways to reduce Greek debt, protect banks exposed to economically troubled euro-zone countries, and include a rescue fund to keep the crisis from spreading.

But the issue of how to handle the Greek crisis continues to vex euro-zone leaders. Some economists say the medicine of austerity is actually killing the patient by stalling Greece's weak economy. The country's deep recession is in its third year, and the official unemployment rate rose to 16.5% this summer, one of the highest on record for Greece.

Personal bankruptcies are also on the rise as people struggle to pay bills and mortgages on reduced salaries and pensions. Many Greeks say they're so squeezed they won't be able pay the new property tax demanded by lenders. "Nearly all of our neighbors are having the same problem," says Roula Korobili, a retired secretary whose family of four survives on her $1,000 monthly pension. "We're just ready to throw up our hands."

But the most politically sensitive item in the new austerity package is a provision that would reduce the power of collective bargaining in some sectors, including banking, journalism and manufacturing. Unions strongly oppose the measure. They say it's bad for workers and is the first step towards dismantling the national minimum wage, which, at around €740 ($1,000) net pay, is higher than in most European countries — Spain's is €641.50 ($880), while Portugal's is €485 ($670).

Louka Katseli, who was ousted as Labor Minister this summer but is still in parliament, was planning to vote against the provision. Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos says it must pass because international lenders have demanded that Greece make its labor market more flexible. (See more on the Greek Meltdown: Putting the Hell in Hellas.)

The schism over collective bargaining isn't just about the working class and the minimum wage. It's also about the power of Greece's labor unions, which have been part of the country's political machinery for years. Platon Tinios, a professor of economics at the University of Piraeus, says labor unions "as they currently exist in Greece have hurt, not helped the country." They hang on to bureaucracy that strangles the country but benefits them, he says.

"This particular legislation is actually moving away from centralization," adds Tinios. "And I think this is what the unions are particularly worried about. They might lose control. They're afraid things will be happening further away from their reach."

Unions have in the past been especially supportive of the ruling center-left PASOK party, which is now trailing the main opposition, center-right New Democracy party in public opinion polls. Union leaders now deride PASOK as traitors, while Finance Minister Venizelos likened the chronic strikes to "blackmail" at a critical time for Greece.

A two-week strike by sanitation workers has left the streets of Athens piled high with trash. The capital's exasperated mayor, George Kaminis, is trying to hire private workers to pick up the rotting garbage after the Hellenic Center for Disease Control and Prevention warned that it would turn into a public-health hazard. Sanitation worker unions have threatened violence if private contractors come in. Kaminis is now appealing to the army for help. (See if the Greek cuts have gone too far.)

Meanwhile, Prime Minister George Papandreou has appealed for unity on the crisis. "We must persevere in this war as people, as a government, as a parliamentary group in order for the country to win it," he told his cabinet on Tuesday.

But as she joined in the protests on Wednesday, housewife Evangelia Trifona saw no victory for Greece in this war. She shook her head as she watched riot police and angry demonstrators fight on a street where she once took her daughter for shopping and souvlaki. The crowed yelled at the police, who doused them with tear gas again. Trifona covered her face with the sleeve of her cardigan. "Shame on you," she coughed at a young officer. "We're running out of hope. Can't you see?"

Read "Greeks Take to the Streets Against More Cuts."

See why the euro isn't fixed yet.

The Internet Weighs About as Much as a Strawberry

Last week, the world was shocked—shocked!—to discover that downloading an electronic book to a device such as a Kindle actually increases the weight of the Kindle. Not by any truly measurable amount, said the New York Times, but still: adding data to a device apparently results in trapped electrons which "have a higher energy than the untrapped ones."

And though the amount of data contained in a tiny e-book file is so miniscule as to render it almost irrelevant, the results become more meaningful when you measure a much larger set of data. In that spirit, how much does all the information on the entire internet weigh?

The conclusion: about as much as a strawberry. Check out the above video for the explanation, which includes details about the Kindle stuff, too.

How Much Does The Internet Weigh? [YouTube via Buzzfeed]

Firebombed French Paper: No Free Speech Martyr

A police officer stands in front of the headquarters of satiric French newspaper Charlie Hebdo, where a fire broke out overnight, November 2, 2011. (Photo: Thibault Camus / AP)

Okay, so can we finally stop with the idiotic, divisive, and destructive efforts by “majority sections” of Western nations to bait Muslim members with petulant, futile demonstrations that “they” aren't going to tell “us” what can and can't be done in free societies? Because not only are such Islamophobic antics futile and childish, but they also openly beg for the very violent responses from extremists their authors claim to proudly defy in the name of common good. What common good is served by creating more division and anger, and by tempting belligerent reaction?

The difficulty in answering that question is also what's making it hard to have much sympathy for the French satirical newspaper firebombed this morning, after it published another stupid and totally unnecessary edition mocking Islam. The Wednesday morning arson attack destroyed the Paris editorial offices of Charlie Hebdo after the paper published an issue certain to enrage hard-core Islamists (and offend average Muslims) with articles and “funny” cartoons featuring the Prophet Mohammed—depictions forbidden in Islam to boot. Predictably, the strike unleashed a torrent of unqualified condemnation from French politicians, many of whom called the burning of the notoriously impertinent paper as “an attack on democracy by its enemies.”

We, by contrast, have another reaction to the firebombing: Sorry for your loss, Charlie, and there's no justification of such an illegitimate response to your current edition. But do you still think the price you paid for printing an offensive, shameful, and singularly humor-deficient parody on the logic of “because we can” was so worthwhile? If so, good luck with those charcoal drawings your pages will now be featuring.

Though police say they still don't know who staged the apparent strike, the (sorry) inflammatory religious theme of the new edition has virtually everyone suspecting Muslim extremists were responsible. Which, frankly, is exactly why it's hard not to feel it's the kind of angry response--albeit in less destructive form-- Charlie Hebdo was after in the first place. What was the point otherwise? Yet rather than issuing warnings to be careful about what one asks for, the arson  prompted political leaders and pundits across the board to denounce the arson as an attack on freedom of speech, liberty of expression, and other rights central to French and other Western societies. In doing so they weren't entirely alone. Muslim leaders in France and abroad also stepped up to condemn the action--though not without duly warning people to wait for police to identify the perpetrators before assigning guilt, especially via association.

The reasons for such concern were as obvious as the suspicions about who had staged the strike: the coarse and heavy-handed Islamist theme of the current edition of Charlie Hebdo. As part of its gag, the paper had re-named itself “Sharia Hebdo”. It also claimed to have invited Mohammed as its guest editor to “celebrate the victory” of the Islamist Ennahda party in Tunisia's first free elections last week. In addition to satirical articles on Islam-themed topics, the paper contains drawings of Mohammed in cartoons featuring Charlie Hebdo's trademark over-the-top (and frequently not “ha-ha funny”) humor. The cover, for example, features a crudely-drawn cartoon of the Prophet saying “100 Whip Lashes If You Don't Die Of Laughter.” Maybe you had to be there when it was first sketched.

If that weren't enough to offend Muslims sensitive to jokes about their faith, history helped raised hackles further. In 2007, Charlie Hebdo re-published the infamous (and, let' face it, just plain lame) Mohammed caricatures initially printed in 2005 by Danish paper Jyllands-Posten. As intended, those produced outrage--and at times violent reaction--from Muslims around the world (not to mention repeated terror plots to kill illustrators responsible for the drawings). Apart from unconvincing claims of exercising free speech in Western nations where that right no longer needs to be proved, it's unclear what the objectives of the caricatures were other than to offend Muslims—and provoke hysteria among extremists. After it's 2007 reprinting of those, Charlie Hebdo was acquitted by a French court on inciting racial hatred charges lodged by French Islamic groups over those and other caricatures—including one run as the paper's cover cartoon depicting Mohammed complaining “It's Hard To Be Loved By (expletives)”. When it comes to Islam, Charlie Hebdo has a million of 'em—but they're all generally as weak as they are needlessly provocative.

Editors, staff, fans, and apologists of Charlie Hebdo have repeatedly pointed out that the paper's take-no-prisoners humor spares no religion, political party, or social group from its questionable humor. They've also tended to defend the publication during controversy as a kind of gut check of free society: a media certain to anger, infuriate, and offend just about everybody at some point or another. As such, Charlie Hebdo has cultivated its insolence proudly as a kind of public duty—pushing the limits of freedom of speech, come what may. But that seems more self-indulgent and willfully injurious when it amounts to defending the right to scream “fire” in an increasingly over-heated theater.

Why? Because like France's 2010 law banning the burqa in public (and earlier legislation prohibiting the hijab in public schools), the nation's government-sponsored debates on Islam's place in French society all reflected very real Islamophobic attitudes spreading throughout society. Indeed, such perceived anti-Muslim action has made France a point of focus for Islamist radicals at home and abroad looking to harp on new signs of aggression against Islam. It has also left France's estimated five million Muslims feeling stigmatized and singled out for discriminatory treatment—a resentment that can't be have been diminished by seeing Charlie Hebdo's mockery of Islam “just for fun” defended as a hallowed example of civil liberty by French pols. It's yet to be seen whether Islamist extremists were behind today's arson, but both the paper's current edition, and the rush of politicians to embrace it as the icon of French democracy, raises the possibility of even moderate Muslims thinking “good on you” if and when militants are eventually fingered for the strike. It's all so unnecessary.

It's obvious free societies cannot simply give in to hysterical demands made by members of any beyond-the-pale group. And it's just as clear that intimidation and violence must be condemned and combated for whatever reason they're committed—especially if their goal is to undermine freedoms and liberties of open societies. But it's just evident members of those same free societies have to exercise a minimum of intelligence, calculation, civility and decency in practicing their rights and liberties—and that isn't happening when a newspaper decides to mock an entire faith on the logic that it can claim to make a politically noble statement by gratuitously pissing people off.

Defending freedom of expression in the face of oppression is one thing; insisting on the right to be obnoxious and offensive just because you can is infantile. Baiting extremists isn't bravely defiant when your manner of doing so is more significant in offending millions of moderate people as well. And within a climate where violent response—however illegitimate—is a real risk, taking a goading stand on a principle virtually no one contests is worse than pointless: it's pointlessly all about you.

So, yeah, the violence inflicted upon Charlie Hebdo was outrageous, unacceptable, condemnable, and illegal. But apart from the “illegal” bit, Charlie Hebdo's current edition is all of the above, too.

Spain: In Majorca, a Family Feud over Chopin's Piano

This post is in partnership with Worldcrunch, a new global-news site that translates stories of note in foreign languages into English. The article below was originally published in Süddeutsche Zeitung.

The news from the courthouse in Palma comes as a tough blow for Frédéric Chopin fans who paid good money to see what was supposed to be the piano and living space used by the legendary composer during his late-in-life sojourn on the Spanish island of Majorca.

For a century, the Ferrá-Capllonch family, which owns Cell No. 2 in the former Carthusian monastery in Valldemossa, lured tourists to where they claimed Chopin had lived with his mistress, George Sand, and her children. The site also features the piano on which he supposedly completed his 24 Preludes, Op. 28.

As it turns out, they were wrong — about both the living quarters and the famous piano. Based on extensive research, the jurists were able to show conclusively that the instrument in Cell No. 2 was built after Chopin's 1849 death, and that the composer had in fact occupied another cell — one that's owned by a family with the surname Quetglas.

The court awarded the Quetglas family exclusive marketing rights, cutting the Ferrá-Capllonch family completely out of the Chopin legacy. What's more, the Ferrá-Capllonch family must now publicly announce that their piano is not the real thing. The piano had attracted approximately 300,000 tourists per year to Valldemossa, where visitors paid for tickets based on the idea they were buying a bit of proximity to the life and work of a man who is one of music's all-time greats. (See the 50 best websites of 2011.)

Chopin arrived in Majorca on Nov. 15, 1838, accompanied by his mistress, the French writer Amantine Dupin, or Baroness Dudevant (1804-76), who used the pseudonym George Sand. At the time, Majorca was considered a remote location. Valldemossa was even more off the beaten path — a dark village in the picturesque Tramontane mountain range, an ideal place for a celebrated musician to get well away from it all. Sand wrote a book about the sojourn, Winter in Majorca, which was to become as much a part of her legend as it is of Chopin's.

A Three-Generation Family Feud
Chopin aficionados from around the world flock to the charterhouse, which belongs to the Ferrá-Capllonch and Quetglas families and was turned into a museum in 1910. Exhibits include letters, musical scores, drawings — even some of Chopin's hair. Over time, restaurants and souvenir shops set up business, and the old monastery became something of a pilgrimage site. But soon enough, hostilities broke out between the two families, and the feud has carried on through three generations.

As early as 1932, Chopin biographer Edouard Ganche went to Majorca to try and clear up the issue of the cell and the piano. He interviewed the Quetglas banking family and examined their piano, made by the Pleyel company, which at the time was in their home. Ganche stated that this was without a doubt the instrument played by the composer, so the family moved it back into the cell they owned. (See TIME's 100 best albums.)

The problem was that the Ferrá-Capllonch family was already advertising their piano as the real thing, and when they heard of the recent developments on the Quetglas side, they announced that their instrument — made by the Oliver Suau company — had been "certified as authentic." The arguments went on for years, outliving the Spanish Civil War and Franco's dictatorship, with the Ferrá-Capllonch family enjoying the upper hand.

By the 1990s, the Quetglas family had had enough, and had a new edition of Ganche's book published. More and more Chopin experts were meanwhile casting their vote with the Quetglas cell and piano. There was documentation to support them. One letter that Chopin penned to French piano maker Camille Pleyel stated: "I'm sending you the Preludes, that I finished composing on your piano." The missive seemed like fairly conclusive evidence. Additional proof was found in an account by a translator of Sand's book who had spoken with someone who was alive at the time and personally confirmed that the room occupied by Chopin was in fact the Quetglas cell. Finally, a drawing by Sand's son, Maurice, shows details specific to the Quetglas cell.

Before issuing their verdict, the judges in the Palma case visited the charterhouse. Their decision appears to put an end to a long-lasting farce. Still, the Ferrá-Capllonch family, while it may have lost the case, still has a huge collection of Chopin memorabilia — and they are also the organizers of the Valldemossa Chopin Festival.

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