630 kilos of hashish and 28 arrests, nine of them in Málaga, as well as in Cádiz, Almería and Galicia, of a criminal network that trafficked hashish from Morocco and has been dismantled in a joint operation by the Policía Nacional and the Guardia Civil. Eleven arrests and 425 kilos of cannabis buds seized in another police operation that has dismantled a Serbian-Ukrainian network based on the Málaga coast. They are just two examples of operations that were made public at the start of this week.
Several are reported every week, and have been for months, and police forces and the Anti-Drug Prosecutor’s Office in Málaga confirm to RTVE the effects of the police pressure of the Special Plan for the Campo de Gibraltar: «The balloon effect has been noticeable. There has always been drug trafficking here, but it is true that the drug trafficking in Málaga is somewhat different from what has been seen in the Campo de Gibraltar. But now it has increased because of the pressure we have there. Hauls are increasing, transports are increasing, the go fast boats…», says Lieutenant Valadés, head of the Judicial Police Unit of the Guardia Civil in the Málaga command.
The figures back this up. The Public Prosecutor’s 2020 Annual Report speaks of 12% more court proceedings opened in Málaga for drug trafficking.
And the Ministry of the Interior counts 2,915 arrests for drug trafficking and organised crime in the province of Málaga and 53,476 kilos of drugs seized, mainly hashish, followed by marijuana and cocaine, from January to November 2020. These figures are around 3% higher than for the whole of the previous year, despite the pandemic. And in barely four and a half months of 2021 so far, the Policía Nacional alone has dismantled 32 organised groups on the Costa del Sol; in the whole of 2018 the figure was 60. The Ministry of the Interior’s response last July was to extend the Gibraltar Plan to the neighbouring provinces with greater resources.
Costa del Sol, a paradise for international drug lords
But although there are now more hauls being unloaded on Málaga’s beaches, ‘narcolanchas’ (drug-running speedboats) are being built, and the first ‘narcosubmarine’ built in Europe, ready to carry up to two tonnes of drugs, was even seized last March in a warehouse in the interior of the province, the Costa del Sol has always been a refuge for international drug lords.
«The Costa del Sol has a number of fundamental ingredients for this criminal activity: its proximity to Africa, specifically Morocco, its proximity to Gibraltar, good ports such as Algeciras and Málaga, infrastructure such as Málaga airport, and the fact that life is good on the Costa del Sol. We have communities from all over Europe living here all year round, and among them there are also foreign nationals involved in drug trafficking who take advantage of the anonymity», says the head of the Policía Nacional’s UDYCO in Málaga, Chief Inspector Antonio Rodríguez Puertas, pointing to the key factors.
«Not only because of the quality of life on the Costa del Sol, but also because of the very large number of luxury developments in the north of Marbella and Estepona, where one enjoys considerable isolation and solitude, the great majority of the major European and international trafficking clans buy and settle in homes from which they run their entire operations», adds Málaga’s anti-drug prosecutor, Fernando Bentabol.
While in the Campo de Gibraltar between 80 and 90% of drug traffickers are «local», many of them belonging to family clans, on the Costa del Sol there are Irish, Nordic, Dutch, British, Italian and Russian criminal groups… and so on, up to any European nationality imaginable.
“It’s like trying to count the sand on the beach“
But if we ask how many could be operating in the province of Málaga, the answer from those tasked with fighting them is very graphic: «It’s like trying to count the sand on the beach», says Lieutenant Valadés, while prosecutor Bentabol says it is «incalculable» and that those we know of «are a twentieth part at the very most, perhaps even a hundredth».
This implies constant cooperation with European police forces, among which the Spanish police enjoy the highest prestige, as they usually bear the brunt of operations as the gateway for drugs into the rest of Europe.
Increasingly violent settling of scores
These numerous international groups are increasingly rivals for their slice of the drug trafficking pie, resorting to so-called vuelcos, the term in police slang for the theft of drugs between criminal organisations. Although the increase in police pressure, which leads to larger seizures, has had some influence here, on many occasions these vuelcos happen because some drug traffickers see it as «easier» to rob another trafficker than to do all the work, which also involves the use of violence, says the head of the Judicial Police Unit of the Guardia Civil in Málaga.
In fact, in his opinion, the «paradise» that the Costa del Sol was for drug traffickers «was broken when they began attacking one another».
This violence also affects the police, because in many of these vuelcos the drug mafias use uniforms to pass themselves off as members of the police forces, which «creates an added danger in our operations because they doubt that we are security forces», stresses Valadés.
These settlings of scores between criminal organisations have not only become more violent but also increasingly conspicuous. Such as that of the drug trafficker Maradona, shot in 2018 as he left church after his son’s communion in San Pedro Alcántara, so that «everyone would realise that those who do wrong will pay for it», says the prosecutor. Or even cases of ‘narcoterrorism’, with the use of explosive devices as a warning, especially in 2018, when a Swedish organisation brought this method, common in Sweden, to the Costa del Sol «to intimidate and kill», explains the head of UDYCO in Málaga.
Rodríguez Puertas attributes this escalation of violence in the settling of scores to the fact that the new ‘narcos’ of the Costa del Sol are «third generations, very young leaders who want to rise very quickly in the criminal pyramid and who have violence in their DNA».
There are even groups of hitmen who work for pay for any organisation to carry out these settlings of scores and, once done, mostly through the traditional method of shooting with a handgun or assault submachine gun, they flee to their own country after committing the crime.
But the Policía Nacional in Málaga, which was already a pioneer in 1976 with the creation of what is now UDYCO, has created a specific group with officers specialised in drug trafficking and homicide in order
to combat these settlings of scores with good results: in 2019 there were 25 murders, mostly attributable to organised crime, and in 2020 there were seven.
The need for resources in investigations
The Special Plan for the Campo de Gibraltar provides for an increase in resources, which the Anti-Drug Prosecutor’s Office is also demanding for Málaga. Only Bentabol is dedicated full time to drug trafficking, «and he would need at least three or four more full-time prosecutors», in investigations that are becoming longer and more complex, which results in the release of suspects who are highly likely to resume their criminal activity, or in procedural errors that could wreck lengthy investigations.
This complexity arises especially in investigating the financing of these criminal groups, for whom cutting off funding channels is vital, and who now also turn to cryptocurrencies for money laundering. «Right now it is quite complex to be able to track them, because above all access to cryptocurrency wallets is very, very tightly controlled, besides the fact that many of them are on the ‘deep web’, so police investigation becomes basically impossible», explains Bentabol.
The ingenuity of the ‘narcos’ knows no limits, and they of course also use it to hide the drugs. «When we talk above all about synthetic drugs, such as cocaine or heroin, they have real experts at smuggling them in and they put drugs in everyday objects you could never imagine. I have seen it in shirts, I have seen prawns made of cocaine… products which, unless you have a dog that sniffs out the drug, you have no way of knowing are drugs», says Bentabol.
They are also asking for resources, specifically a main Guardia Civil post open 24 hours, mayors such as the mayor of Manilva, the last municipality in Málaga bordering the Campo de Gibraltar, where ‘narcolanchas’ have arrived and where there have even been helicopter chases of them, as has happened in parts of Estepona and even Marbella.
Mario Jiménez is one of the few mayors on the Costa del Sol who dares to voice his concern publicly: «It’s not pleasant for anyone, especially now with social media, seeing landings, fuel loading… And it is true that today it is not just a problem for Manilva, it is being seen in other neighbouring towns (…). An image of Manilva is being given that is not the way it should be, although I also don’t want to dramatise because these are isolated cases«, says the Manilva mayor.
With more or fewer resources, the police’s message to the drug traffickers is clear: «We are going to carry on. We are not taking a step back», says the Guardia Civil officer.
«We are here and we are not going to stop working and preventing them from settling. Either they leave, or they go to prison», adds Rodríguez Puertas.
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