It's ten o'clock. The waters dance calmly on the Vallcarca beach in Sitges as if nothing had happened here a few days before. It is one of the few dog-friendly beaches in the area. Bathers spend the last days of summer and some play with their pets. The temperature is much more pleasant than a few days ago when what everyone ignores happened. The Hola beach bar is about to open and a van in a complicated maneuver tries to sneak through the only gap there is to reverse the vehicle and unload the drinks. There are still a couple of hours to open. Although less, the sun continues to burn. The cook at the beach bar is completely unaware of what happened. “I'm going to call the security guard to see if he saw anything”… “He doesn't know anything either,” he says.
Vallcarca beach became the place chosen by drug traffickers to unload the drugs they had transported from Morocco. The pressure of the Civil Guard in the Strait pushes drug traffickers to look for new enclaves where they can unload their merchandise and lately they have found new points on the coast of Barcelona. “When you close one door, three open,” says a Benemérita spokesperson.
Tuesday August 30. It's 2 in the morning. The beach bar is now closed. The beach is located in a strategic enclave. Far from the urban center of Sitges – crowded with tourists – and next to the C-31 highway, so that the vans leave at full speed once they have loaded the merchandise. Three vehicles are circulating in the area. With the engine running they enter and leave the parking lot that is a few meters from the beach. The Rapid Action Group of the Civil Guard is alerted by a patrol that there are strange movements in the area. A surveillance device is activated.
It's 5:30 in the morning. The drug boat appears on the beach. There are about twenty men waiting. The boat docks at the place where bathers will play with their dogs the next day. The porters – this is what the porters who unload are called – begin to pack away.
In total there are 4,555 kilos of hashish distributed in 121 bales that are loaded into three vehicles: an Iveco van, a stolen Toyota Land Cruiser and a Renault brand refrigerated truck. The agents in charge of surveillance give the order to act. Several civil guards go down to the beach to intercept the cache. Upon noticing the presence of the police officers, who are wearing reflective vests and fluorescent lights, the refrigerated truck, loaded with 79 bales weighing 2,887 kilos, accelerates and tries to flee. Three agents are about to be run over. The civil guards react and throw the spikes – the technical name is a chain of sharp tetrapods – onto the asphalt and manage to stop the vehicle. At that moment, the three passengers jump out of the truck with the engine still running with the intention of fleeing, but they are intercepted and detained. More arrests occur on the beach. In total there are 17, one of them a minor. They are all porters who were unloading the merchandise. Those arrested are of Moroccan nationality, except for the driver of the truck, who is Spanish, a native of Cádiz, and who has numerous records for unloading hashish in the Strait. The other Iveco van was abandoned by its occupants without being able to be arrested. The drug boat also fled out to sea. After a week in detention, the judge sent three of them to prison.
In the cabin of the refrigerated truck, weapons of war were found: an Armalite AR.10 automatic combat rifle loaded with ammunition and ready to be used at any time; an APC223 semi-automatic rifle, also loaded. In the same vehicle, a Walter pistol was also seized in the driver's door storage compartment; a Glock pistol in the passenger door and another Glock pistol in the glove compartment. All of them were loaded and “ready to be used,” details the Civil Guard report. The drug traffickers were armed to the teeth to repel any attempt by a rival gang to steal their drugs.
It is not yet a concern but in recent times, although slowly, drug boats have appeared or unloadings have been carried out on the coasts of Barcelona, more frequent events on the coasts of Tarragona. In February, the Mossos arrested 15 people who were caught unloading a drug boat in the port of Mataró. In April, an abandoned drug boat appeared on a beach in Viladecans. And in July, cleaning workers found three bales of hashish on a beach in El Prat.
