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SPAIN: Europe’s Gateway for Cocaine Clamps Down on Trafficking

Alicia Fraerman

MADRID, Nov 6 2007 (IPS) - The Spanish government plans to use more modern technology and strengthen its intelligence services to fight drug trafficking, both domestic and across its borders. Spain is the main gateway for drugs into Europe, and is also the European country with the highest levels of consumption.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) World Report for 2006 warns that demand for cocaine is rising in western Europe to alarming levels, and reports that there are 3.5 million cocaine consumers in Europe, 26 percent of the world total.

The report also says that an average of 1.1 percent of Europeans between the ages of 15 and 64 use cocaine. But in Spain the proportion stands at two percent, only 0.3 percent below the level of consumption in the United States.

In an unprecedentedly large operation in early October, the police dismantled three large-scale cocaine laboratories where drugs were found hidden in chairs and sofas. Over 35 kg of cocaine were seized, as well as three tons of chemical products used to recover the illegal substance from the upholstery.

Thirteen people involved in the laboratories were arrested, said the chief of the police brigade, Juan Antonio Hernández.

The gang also hid cocaine in lollipops, known as “chupa-chups”, normally made and sold in Spain but in this case imported from Colombia. The drug traffickers made a hollow in the lollipop and packed it with cocaine, then inserted the stick used to hold the sweet.

But the latest method for bringing drugs into Spain is by small airplanes, which have a flight time of only 15 minutes from the loading point in Morocco to an empty field or back road in this country.

Julio Martín, a local pilot who is not involved in drug trafficking, told IPS that the small planes are seldom picked up by radar. For example, “once or twice my plane has been detected and I’ve been ordered to identify myself, but generally that doesn’t happen,” he said.

In response to the new challenges, the security forces are planning a two-pronged approach. On the one hand, the radar system is to be improved, and on the other, intelligence activities are to be intensified to identify groups sending drugs from Morocco or across the Atlantic, and those who receive the drugs in Spain.

Police sources told IPS that for years, since Colombian drug traffickers created cocaine storage facilities in Africa, they have maintained the theory that the smugglers would try to get into Spain via its southern coasts, as is happening now. Locating the storage sites and watching for movements there is a prime concern of the Spanish intelligence services.

An idea of the amount of money involved in this illegal trade is given by the capture on Oct. 28 in Lérida, Spain of a truck headed for Italy carrying 34 kg of cocaine, with a street value of about three million euros (4.2 million dollars).

That same day the police broke up two drug trafficking rings and arrested 10 people from Spain, Colombia and Morocco, who were in possession of 250 kg of cocaine and 425 kg of hashish.

The gang took delivery of the drugs in Madrid and distributed them to the rest of Spain, hidden in the false bottom of a truck and in the excavation arms of two bulldozers.

It is common knowledge that mafias similar to those in Sicily operate on the northern stretches of the Spanish Mediterranean coast, and that they specialise in drug trafficking.

Roberto Saviano, a man who belonged to the world of the “camorra” or mafia in Naples, Italy, published a book, “Gomorra”, in Spain this year which has sold over one million copies. In it he discloses the activities of the Naples mafia, and as a result he was forced to flee from Italy.

In Madrid, he said in an interview with the newspaper La Razón that the camorra bosses “are entrepreneurs whose only limits are what’s good for business,” and that “the authorities only intervene when there are too many dead bodies, when the drug traffickers have overstepped the mark. Otherwise, they don’t do much about it.”

At any rate, “The use of force alone will never eliminate the mafia,” he said.

Speaking of Spain, he said that this country “is a bunker for every Italian criminal organisation. They move around freely here, but Spanish people don’t see it. I don’t know if that’s because they don’t want to, or because they just have poor sight.”

He pointed out that “the most important fugitive from Italian justice, Rafaelle Amato, lives in Barcelona and no one bothers him.” The reason this can happen, he said, is because Spanish drug traffickers are simply middlemen for drugs passing through the country in transit, but not remaining within it, because “it’s the gateway for cocaine into Europe.”

In Saviano’s view, “cocaine has contributed significantly to Spain’s impressive economic development over the past few years.”

Meanwhile, cocaine keeps pouring into Spain, and not only by the southern route from Africa, but also by sea into the northwestern region of Galicia.

In the 1980s, groups of fisherfolk who used to smuggle liquor from ocean-going ships to the Galician coast began to traffic in drugs as well to increase their profits. For a while Galicia was the most important point of entry of drugs into Europe.

But increasing interdiction by police on the high seas, and the arrest of the biggest Spanish drug lords of the time, forced traffickers to seek other routes.

As well as contraband by land and sea, drugs are also smuggled in by the usual air transport routes. The Civil Guard (militarised police) seized more than three tons of drugs, and arrested 763 people in connection with them, at Barajas airport in Madrid in the first 10 months of this year.

The police have also asked for security controls at the 84 sporting ports dotted along the Spanish coasts, as these lack even basic vigilance and are “real filtration points for weapons and drugs” entering Europe, police commanders say.