"In this wonderful dark story of love and fate, the Bride lives on a barren, desolate plain, where esparto (Spanish "esparto", used as a tough fiber for weaving) is the only crop that can be grown. Faced with a potential cultural gap, the different translators approached it in very different ways."

From the description it is certainly possible that "hemp" was the plant grown. Besides being a source of fiber, it is known to be a tough plant that can grow in many places where other plants would wither.

Sorry for the quibble, but marijuana is not an opiate per se. Opiates are those chemicals related to opium, which comes from the opium poppy, _Papaver somniferum_. Codeine, morphine and heroin are opiates, for example. Read more about it at

http://www.arf.org/isd/pim/opiates.html

http://www.heroin.org/poppy.html