Reference dossier · Myco project
The advocacy coalition (PAREA), the EU-funded clinical vehicle (PsyPal), the citizen-led legislative attempt (PsychedeliCare), and the Spanish actors — with links, roles, and recent conference activity.
Awakn Life Sciences is not a Spanish organisation. It is a clinical-stage biotech registered in Toronto, Canada (217 Queen Street West), with clinical operations in the UK — Awakn Clinics Bristol and London. In May 2025 it was acquired by Solvonis Therapeutics plc (LSE: SVNS), a London-listed company. Its pipeline is ketamine-based for Alcohol Use Disorder, not psilocybin. It appears in PAREA's industry partner tier, which is distinct from full membership.
The genuinely Spanish actors in this space are ICEERS (Barcelona), SEMPsi, Fundación Inawe, and IESE Business School as a PsyPal consortium partner. Section 2 covers them.
The Psychedelic Access and Research European Alliance is a Brussels-based, non-profit, membership-led, multistakeholder partnership. It is a coalition rather than a governing federation: members keep full independence, and PAREA coordinates advocacy toward EU institutions on their behalf.
Vice-chairs are Deirdre Ryan (President, Pain Alliance Europe) and Frédéric Destrebecq (Executive Director, European Brain Council). PAREA's scope is explicitly prescription use within a clinical context — it does not advocate on cultivation, possession, or decriminalisation. parea.eu · Member roster
Several members are themselves umbrellas federating dozens of national bodies (EBC, EFNA, ECL, Pain Alliance Europe), which makes PAREA closer to an umbrella-of-umbrellas in reach than a flat alliance.
| Organisation | Base | What it is / why it matters | Link |
|---|---|---|---|
| Beckley Foundation | UK | Think-tank and NGO pioneering psychedelic research and evidence-based drug policy reform. Amanda Feilding's vehicle; the longest-running European scientific advocacy body in the field, dating to 1998. | beckleyfoundation.org |
| OPEN Foundation | NL | Leading European non-profit advancing psychedelic research and therapy. Organises ICPR, Europe's flagship scientific conference, and is a PsyPal consortium partner running dissemination. | open-foundation.org |
| Drug Science | UK | Independent, science-led drugs charity founded by David Nutt after his dismissal as UK government adviser. Supplies the scheduling-reform evidence base that PAREA deploys at EU level. | drugscience.org.uk |
| MIND Foundation | DE | European non-profit science and education organisation promoting psychedelic research and therapy in clinical settings. Runs the Augmented Psychotherapy Training and the INSIGHT conference series. | mind-foundation.org |
| Osmond Foundation / HumanKindLabs | UK / NL | Non-profit supporting psychedelic research through fundraising, grants and education. Named in PsyPal materials under both identities — the rebrand is visible in the consortium logo set. | humankindlabs.org |
| European Brain Council (EBC) | BE | Network of key players in the brain area — scientific societies, patient organisations, professional societies, industry. Founding PAREA member; supplies institutional credibility in Brussels. | braincouncil.eu |
| ECNP | NL | European College of Neuropsychopharmacology. In 2026 launched a free 12-lecture course, "Psychedelic Research: Science, Therapy and Future Directions in Mental Health." The most significant mainstreaming signal on this list. | ecnp.eu |
| European Psychiatric Association (EPA) | FR | Primary body representing psychiatry in Europe, 78,000+ members. Joined PAREA as a full member in October 2022 and is also a PsyPal consortium partner. | europsy.net |
| EFNA | BE | European Federation of Neurological Associations — patient advocacy for MS, Parkinson's and other neurological conditions. Both a PAREA member and a PsyPal partner; the patient-voice bridge between the two. | efna.net |
| ECL | BE | Association of European Cancer Leagues. Founding member; relevant because the strongest early psilocybin evidence is in end-of-life and cancer-related distress. | cancer.eu |
| GAMIAN-Europe | BE | Patient-driven pan-European organisation representing people affected by mental ill-health. Provides the patient mandate behind PAREA's access arguments. | gamian.eu |
| Pain Alliance Europe | BE | Umbrella of 40 national and regional associations across 17 European countries, focused on chronic pain. Its president is a PAREA vice-chair. | pae-eu.eu |
| ICEERS Spain | Barcelona | Full PAREA member since January 2025. See section 2. | iceers.org |
| Women's Brain Foundation | CH | International non-profit advocating for sex- and gender-sensitive research and healthcare. Relevant to a field with known sex-differentiated dosing and response questions. | womensbrainfoundation.org |
| SIMEPSI | Italy | Italian Society for Psychedelic Medicine — the first Italian scientific society dedicated to the field. Note: Italian, not Spanish; its Spanish counterpart is SEMPsi. | simepsi.it |
| UPRA | Ukraine | Ukrainian Psychedelic Research Association — academics, clinicians, patients and activists advancing legal therapeutic use in Ukraine. Subject of a May 2026 European Parliament meeting. | via PAREA |
| CEBDP | UK | UK think tank using parliamentary links to promote evidence-based drug policy aimed at reducing harm and unlocking medical benefit. | via PAREA |
Reported member counts range from 13 (2023) to 15 (2022) to an unnumbered "membership-led" description now, and PAREA adds Community Supporters on a rolling basis (Rights Reporter Foundation, ACER Integration and the International Jungian Psychedelic Association were added recently). Secondary reporting is stale. For an exact current roster, pull parea.eu/members directly.
Spain has no PAREA-equivalent national coalition, but it has four distinct entities with different functions: an ethnobotanical policy NGO, a clinical scientific society, a foundation that runs the flagship national event, and a business school inside the EU-funded trial consortium.
International Center for Ethnobotanical Education, Research and Service. Non-profit founded by Benjamin De Loenen, based at Carrer de Sepúlveda 65, 08015 Barcelona. Addresses the social, legal, cultural and health dimensions of traditional plant medicines — ayahuasca, iboga, and increasingly psilocybin. Scientific director is Dr José Carlos Bouso.
Relevance to this projectUnlike every other body on this list, ICEERS works the traditional-medicine and drug-policy angle rather than the pharmaceutical-approval angle. It became a full PAREA member in January 2025 and backs PsychedeliCare. If you want the Spanish legal-status picture — including the grey zone around naturally occurring substances that the Kurzbaum review flagged — ICEERS is the primary source.
Linkiceers.org
Spanish non-profit society of clinical professionals and researchers in mental health, formed to promote therapeutic use of and research with psychedelic substances. Its president is a psychologist and doctor of pharmacology at Hospital de Sant Pau, Barcelona, who also coordinates the PsychedeliCare initiative in Spain.
Relevance to this projectThis is the Spanish clinical-scientific counterpart to Italy's SIMEPSI. It is the body that would carry any Spanish push for research authorisations. Note it is a PsychedeliCare partner, not a PAREA member — the two networks overlap but are not the same.
LinkSMC España profile (society's own site should be verified — I could not confirm a stable primary URL)
Spanish foundation that has become the convening body for psychedelic medicine in Spain. Organised Psymposium, held 2–4 October 2025 at the Ilustre Colegio Oficial de Médicos de Madrid, and co-promoted with SEMPsi the first parliamentary conference on psychedelic-assisted psychotherapies at the Congreso de los Diputados on 13 February 2026.
Relevance to this projectThe most direct indicator of where Spanish institutional opinion is heading. A four-hour session in the Sala Ernest Lluch of the Spanish Parliament, with clinicians, researchers and regulatory representatives, is the closest thing Spain has produced to a formal legislative opening.
Graduate business school of the Universidad de Navarra, and the Spanish partner inside the 19-organisation PsyPal consortium.
Relevance to this projectSpain's only formal seat at the EU-funded clinical table. PsyPal has an explicit cost-effectiveness objective — assessing health outcomes against societal costs for patients, carers and providers — and a business school partner most plausibly sits there. I could not confirm IESE's specific work package from primary sources; treat the role attribution as inference, not fact.
Linkiese.edu
No Spanish clinical site in the PsyPal trial. Recruitment runs in Czechia, Denmark, the Netherlands and Portugal only. The nearest active site to Madrid is the Champalimaud Foundation in Lisbon.
PsyPal is the first-ever European grant to fund clinical research into psychedelic-assisted therapy, and the first time the EU has funded a multi-site clinical study in the field. It matters more than any advocacy body on this list, because it converts advocacy into an actual regulatory precedent.
A multi-centre randomised controlled trial of individualised psilocybin therapy for psychological and existential distress in palliative care patients. Participants undergo two therapy sessions receiving either psilocybin or placebo. Crucially, it is the first clinical trial studying psilocybin in non-oncology palliative care patients — previous work concentrated on terminal cancer.
Coordinated by University Medical Centre Groningen (UMCG), Netherlands. Principal investigator: Robert Schoevers, head of psychiatry at UMCG. Website managed by the EAPC. palliativeprojects.eu/psypal · CORDIS record · LinkedIn
| Site | City | Conditions | Contact |
|---|---|---|---|
| UMCG | Groningen, NL | COPD; atypical & advanced Parkinson's | Huib Kerstjens |
| Champalimaud Foundation | Lisbon, PT | COPD; atypical & advanced Parkinson's | Marcelo Mendonça |
| NIMH / NUDZ | Prague, CZ | MS; ALS; atypical & advanced Parkinson's | Michal Zido |
| Bispebjerg Hospital | Copenhagen, DK | ALS | Kirsten Svenstrup |
The Prague site is the Czech National Institute of Mental Health — the same institution as Tomáš Páleníček, co-author of the Kurzbaum review in this project. That is a direct line from your source paper into the active EU trial.
Clinical and academic: UMCG, University of Groningen, Bispebjerg Hospital, University of Copenhagen, Champalimaud Foundation, NIMH Czech Republic (NUDZ), Stockholm University, Uppsala University, IESE Business School. Networks and patient bodies: EAPC, EFNA, EPA, Lung Alliance Netherlands, Madopa. Operational and technology: 29k, A+Science (now CTC), HumanKindLabs, Norrsken Mind, OPEN Foundation.
PAREA is not a consortium partner — it engages with PsyPal rather than sitting inside it. Worth keeping straight: the advocacy layer and the research layer are deliberately separate.
€6.5M from Horizon Europe. First EU grant for clinical psychedelic research.
Approved in participating member states, with an independent Ethics Review still ongoing. The document behind it carried 35 co-authors across 19 partners.
Four countries. Patient-facing flyers published in Dutch, Portuguese and Czech; Danish pending.
PsyPal published a guidance document aimed at other coalitions attempting the same regulatory path — effectively a template for future EU applications. Read
The clearest example of how the advocacy and research layers interlock in practice.
A European Citizens' Initiative, not an advocacy group. The ECI is a formal legal instrument introduced by the Treaty of Lisbon and operative since 2012: collect one million verified signatures across at least seven member states within twelve months, and the European Commission is obliged to respond to the legislative proposal.
Registered by the Commission on 11 September 2024 — the eleventh initiative registered that year. Signature collection ran 14 January 2025 to 13 January 2026. Founded by Théo Giubilei, a Sciences Po Strasbourg graduate with European Parliament and CEMR experience. At launch it was supported by 32 associations across 18 European countries and eventually mobilised more than 400 volunteers.
psychedelicare.eu · Commission registration notice
I could not find a published final signature count. The initiative's own site now says the ECI "ended in January 2026" and that "the movement it gave rise to continues," and coverage refers to a follow-on phase informally called PsychedeliCare 2.0 focused on long-term engagement and education. No success announcement appears anywhere in the sources I checked.
The absence of a threshold-reached announcement strongly suggests it fell short of one million, but I am not asserting that as fact. If the outcome matters to your argument, check the Commission's official ECI register for the verified figure.
OPEN Foundation's biennial flagship, seventh edition, at the Philharmonie Haarlem. Over 1,500 researchers, clinicians and changemakers; more than 100 sessions across four days. Speakers included Peter Gasser (president, Swiss Medical Society for Psycholytic Therapy), Anne Wagner, Joanna Kempner, Grace Blest-Hopley, Harriet de Wit, Manvir Singh. Preceded by three full-day workshops on 3 June. Europe's most credible scientific gathering in the field. icpr-conference.com
Sala Ernest Lluch, Congreso de los Diputados. Four hours, promoted by Fundación Inawe and SEMPsi, bringing clinicians, researchers and regulatory representatives into the legislative process. ICEERS report
Progress update on the EU-funded trial, hosted jointly by the research consortium and the advocacy alliance.
PAREA brought together leaders from 25 countries representing some 30 national psychedelic organisations. The preceding day it participated in a European Parliament meeting on access to psychedelics in Ukraine. Year not stated on PAREA's site — verify whether 2025 or 2026 before citing.
Ilustre Colegio Oficial de Médicos de Madrid, organised by Fundación Inawe. Positioned as a leading Spanish forum to rethink mental health through research, ethics and psychedelic-assisted therapies. ICEERS scientific director José Carlos Bouso played a central role.
Focused on psychedelic therapy and medical ethics, at the PsyPal Portuguese trial site. The nearest major clinical-research event to Madrid.
Creative and psychedelic gathering organised by Asociación Universo Ulises — poets, therapists, researchers and artists. Cultural rather than scientific; included for completeness of the Spanish calendar.
Twelve lectures covering neurobiological mechanisms, clinical protocols, safety considerations and future directions. Free. That a mainstream neuropsychopharmacology college is teaching this openly is arguably the strongest normalisation signal of the past year. ecnp.eu
Three distinct layers, often conflated in press coverage, worth keeping separate:
For your project's purposes, the operative limitation is that none of these bodies advocate on cultivation. PAREA's remit is prescription use in clinical settings. PsyPal is a trial using pharmaceutical-grade psilocybin. ICEERS is the only entity on this list engaging with the legal status of the plant and fungal material itself, and it does so from a traditional-medicine and human-rights angle rather than a cultivation-rights one.