The hashish route has been reborn in Catalonia. The Mossos d’Esquadra have almost doubled bale interventions this year, with 11 and a half tons. Violent incidents in what are known as overturns, robberies among traffickers have increased at the same rate. The Catalan police attribute the phenomenon, with 40 tons seized in the last five years, to the fight against this drug in the Campo de Gibraltar and the Línea de la Concepción, which is produced in Morocco and travels to Europe, and which has put pressure on enormous to traffickers. In the last major operation, in February, the Mossos seized five and a half tons in 154 bales of hashish in the port of Mataró.
“Catalonia is the main route of passage for hashish, by land, since it is introduced to the southern coasts” of the country, explained Inspector Toni Salleras, head of organized crime for the Catalan police. He attributes it to the AP-7, which crosses the country from end to end. The inspector has denied, however, that it is the main landing place. This year alone, the Catalan police have opened 38 investigations linked to hashish, and have dismantled 15 criminal organizations, compared to 10 in 2022 and 5 in 2021. The drug has also increased its price in recent years, from 1,500 euros to 2,100, due, according to the Mossos, to the greater difficulty in providing it to the final consumer.
“A drug that is produced in another country circulates here,” Salleras pointed out at a press conference, about the main difference with marijuana, which grows in warehouses, apartments and Catalan forests, with two plantations a day on average detected by the police. . If hashish has caused 13 overturns, half with firearms, but without any deaths, violent incidents involving marijuana amount to 60 this year, with two homicides on the table. Hashish does not involve the importation of organized crime, as marijuana does. “The organizations that were already here are being reinforced,” Salleras detailed.
But hashish has returned to Catalonia and that worries the Mossos. The drug was released in the early 2000s, but little by little it decreased until it practically disappeared from police radars. In the last five years, organizations have once again sought shelter in hidden coves and secluded beaches, in addition to traditional road routes. The last stash was in Begur, in mid-September, where a van ran aground loaded with 2,500 kilos of hashish. The Mossos suspect that the vehicle slipped on a small ramp in the cove, and decided to leave it abandoned.
The Mossos’ will is to “contain” the situation, and return to the previous scenario. And they insist that, unlike marijuana, crime has not seeped into the legal structures of society. They have, however, found clandestine workshops on the Costa Brava, in Salt, in Rubí and in Barcelona in which the narco-boats used for hashish trafficking are “assembled”: semi-rigid boats of between 8 and 15 meters, with powerful engines, which allow the drugs to reach from the Moroccan coast to Catalonia without the need to refuel. Each one can load between 2,500 and 45.00 kilos, depending on its own capacity. 66% of the hashish that the Mossos have seized has been by sea. “We have had them everywhere. Las Terres de l’Ebre is the main one, probably because of the solitude of the beaches. But lately, landings have returned to the Costa Brava,” explained Salleras.
In February, the Catalan police dealt the biggest blow in recent times to hashish trafficking in Catalonia, when they seized 5.5 tons of hashish in the port of Mataró. “They choose the port because it makes unloading easier: it is easier to do it on the concrete than on the beach. Any private company would make the same decision,” explained Inspector Josep Antoni López Garzón, responsible for the investigation. In the download, they estimate that more than twenty people participated. At the time, 13 people were arrested, to whom 13 more were added as the case progressed. Among them, a port worker who they estimate charged 15,000 euros for letting the drugs in.
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They also accused a family from the Delta de l’Ebre, who they suspect had already acted on other occasions in the unloading of hashish in the port of Mataró, and who have a record for the same reasons. “Some of them have been investigated in Galicia and the Costa del Sol,” López Garzón added, regarding detainees with a diverse profile. “They are between 60 and 21 years old. Some lifelong nationals, and other migrants who may be working as day laborers or unloading hashish,” he explained. Added to them are officials from the organization of origin, who have traveled from Morocco, without direct relationship with the others involved, in case “they have to give explanations if something happens with the drugs.”
Three semi-rigid boats, 12 meters long, arrived at the port of Mataró and divided the drugs between two of them. “We couldn’t intercept the first one. A van managed to leave with the bales. In 18 minutes, they had unloaded 2,000 kilos of hashish,” said Inspector López Garzón, in an operation in which six loaders participated. But they did manage to get hold of the other 5.5 tons. “They were in more elaborate bundles,” he indicated, about packages with “logos to create a brand.” “They want to do marketing applied to hashish,” he said, similar to what happens with cocaine. They even have handles to hang them on your back.
The Mossos detain a thousand people every year linked to hashish trafficking, 40% are Spanish, 30% Moroccan, the country of origin of the drug, and the rest, various nationalities. Much of the drug travels at full speed in high-end cars, known as go fast, which do not stop until they reach France. “It is almost impossible to stop them,” police sources explain, unless they suffer an accident, their car breaks down or they are stopped by chance at a police checkpoint. On other occasions, they are hidden mixed with the legal merchandise of the trucks, without the drivers necessarily knowing it. Or in coves, hidden in vehicles, in small quantities. Cases of aircraft landing in remote areas are residual in Spain, and have never been detected in Catalonia.
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