A crime like the one that occurred in Barbate was something that, unfortunately, was within the realm of possibility in one of the hottest areas in Europe as far as drug trafficking is concerned: the coast of the province of Cádiz. Criminal organizations, except during some periods of forced appeasement due to police pressure, have been increasingly aggressive and brazen. Furthermore, the prohibition of drug boats and the fact that their mere possession entails a crime of smuggling has meant that these light, overpowered boats with huge engines have become a very precious asset for traffickers in the Strait.
Just as before the prohibition, a narcolancha or rubber, as it is known in the slang of the area, was a tool that, except out of modesty or for not giving clues to police investigators, was displayed in public without anything happening or being able to seized, since their illegalization they are the object of special protection by criminal organizations that look for hiding places where they can be kept. A large number of them remain moored in points on the Moroccan coast and no longer in Andalusia because it is much safer for them. But that seems to be changing again.
In the heat of this new situation, there has been a certain proliferation of clandestine workshops in Spain that, for significant sums of money, build the most sophisticated gliders. The security forces have dismantled some of them, in Galicia and Catalonia.
For these reasons, the skippers of these boats, which reach very high speeds and have very powerful engines, do everything possible to save the drug boat. The gliders involved in the Barbate events were unloaded and, according to various information, they were inside the port as a refuge from the episode of very rough seas that reigned on the coast and most likely did not go out into the open area for that reason. The crew of the flimsy Civil Guard boat had the duty of trying to intercept and seize them and that is why a dramatic carousel of cat and mouse began - during which the drug traffickers gloated about their superiority in a coming and going. cocky air -, which ended in the tragedy that today shakes the country.
Despite all this, the number of gliders has not decreased and even proliferated for some time now and that is why the words of the anti-drug prosecutor of Cádiz, Ana Villagómez, who shortly after the deaths of the civil guards He made a desperate appeal on Cadena Ser, assuring that “drug boats run rampant in all the docks” and that what is happening in the area is something exceptional and very serious. If the owners of the boats feel unpunished, as this representative of the Public Ministry states, it is because police prevention is not enough.
The Government's efforts to appease the area since 2018 have been uneven and insufficient, according to several police unions and associations, although not non-existent. There were reinforcements in staff and results began to be obtained from that year, which soon led to the reinforcement of the services of the courts and the Prosecutor's Office. It was the implementation of the special security plan, the results of which Minister Marlaska reported just yesterday. The pressure was such in those days of great reinforcement that, for a certain time, the drug traffickers looked for other less guarded landing areas such as the neighboring provinces of Huelva and Málaga.
The arrival of a special group of the Civil Guard to the area, known as OCON Sur, made up of about 150 troops dedicated exclusively to the repression of drug trafficking and especially hashish from Morocco, gave good results. However, a little over a year ago, that group was dismantled and its components destined for other places. In this, as in other areas of security, crime and police pressure act as communicating vessels: if surveillance goes down, drug activity goes up and vice versa.
The province of Cádiz is not a desired destination for the officials of the National Police and the Civil Guard precisely because of the aggressiveness of these organizations, which is why many only stay the minimum time necessary to get a transfer and that makes it very difficult. the consolidation of veteran squads with deeper roots in the territory.
There is, no doubt, other components that influence this resurgence of impudence and the feeling of impunity that prosecutor Villagómez denounces, such as the narcoculture rooted in a part of the population that takes the issue of hashish trafficking as an almost recreational activity. . There is the idea among those who, more or less directly or peripherally, are involved with drug trafficking in the area, that the smuggling of this drug is more of a “peccadillo” than a crime. Hence the chilling audios that accompany the videos of the tragedy that spread on social networks in which you can hear how a part of the public at the Barbate docks cheered the hostile attitude towards the Civil Guard of the rubber bosses.
All of this contrasts with other sectors of the population that, from groups, neighborhood associations and anti-drug platforms, fight to put a stop to drug activity in the Campo de Gibraltar area and by extension in the entire province of Cádiz. which, although it may seem otherwise, only undermines the economy of those territories and generates social degradation.
