On February 5, the Mossos intercepted a drug shipment in the port of Mataró. Two drug boats entered the dock loaded to the top. In total three arrived but only two approached to avoid risks. Before entering the port, one of the boats loaded the drugs onto another drug boat and turned around. Due to a lack of fuel, it appeared days later abandoned on a beach in Sant Andreu de Llavaneras. The other one that arrived at the dock putting its floating capacity to the limit. A group of thirty people were waiting on the ground ready to unload. A port security guard notified the Mossos when he noticed the eviction.
The Pekín case, - this is how the operation was named due to the proximity of the port to the Pekín beach in Mataró, resulted in the intervention of 154 bales of hashish weighing 5 and a half tons and the arrest of 26 people in two operations ,- the last one carried out in September. The value of the drug on the black market amounts to 11.5 million euros. The organization had bribed one of the port guards with 15,000 euros who allowed the porters to enter.
In the last year, the Mossos have detected thirteen landings of this style on the Catalan coast, double the previous year when six were recorded. Catalonia had noticed in the early 2000s how the coast was a chosen place to unload hashish. That practice, however, declined in 2010 and organizations dedicated to drug trafficking opted to transport merchandise by road. However, starting in 2018 everything changed. Police pressure in the Strait and in the Campo de Gibraltar pushed drug traffickers to look for new enclaves.
Catalonia is not the Galicia of the 80s that 'Fariña' describes, but the Catalan coast has already become a gateway for hashish and a very important strategic step to distribute the drug in the rest of Europe. So far this year, the Catalan police have dismantled 15 criminal organizations, compared to 10 the previous year and 5 in 2021. In addition, 38 new investigations have been opened for hashish trafficking, 912 people have been arrested and 11.6 tons were intervened. In total, since 2018, the Mossos have seized 40 tons of hashish. The trend is increasing and the Catalan police have developed a plan to tackle the phenomenon with the aim of dismantling these organizations that have international ramifications through the coordination of Europol and Eurojust or of driving them away from the Catalan coast through preventive patrolling by the newly created unit. Maritime Police and the implementation of a scanner at checkpoints, similar to that at ports, to detect the load of trucks circulating on the roads.
Unlike marijuana, in which Catalonia is a land of drug production and this entails situations of violence and drug assaults between rival gangs, in the case of hashish the associated violence is less, although it has also experienced an increase. Last year there were seven incidents while this year there were thirteen. Firearms were used in half. “Unlike marijuana, we have not detected associated phenomena such as corruption or infiltration in legal companies,” remarked yesterday Antoni Salleras, chief inspector of the Central Organized Crime Area of the Criminal Investigation Division of the Mossos.
Until now, the most common thing was to do it by road, and specifically along the AP7, in high-end cars or hidden in the load of the truck. Now, the Mossos have found workshops where they transform boats into drug boats, such as in Castelló d'Empúries where an industrial warehouse intended for this activity was discovered.
The narco-boats travel directly from Morocco to the Catalan coast, without stopping to refuel. They use alternative routes, travel at low speed to prevent the wake they leave at sea from giving them away to the police helicopters that patrol in the air and on some occasions the pilots can wait several days at sea for the conditions to be met. favorable for disembarkation. Criminal organizations, in addition to improving the performance of the drug boats, have also improved the quality of the packaging and even screen-printed a logo as if it were a brand to guarantee the quality of the product.
