This summer three Polish citizens rented a chalet near Puerto Banús, in Marbella (Málaga, 150,725 inhabitants). Every night, two of them left the house, got into a vehicle and approached the entertainment area, where they contacted the bouncers of a nightclub. Then, a third compatriot was in charge of distributing the merchandise they had agreed upon, MDMA in rock, a substance known as crystal. They repeated the operation for several days without knowing that they had the National Police on their heels. When the agents gathered enough information and evidence, they went after them. They seized the substance from several buyers and then, during one of the transfers from the property to the leisure area, they intercepted the car in which they were traveling. Inside they found two stones of MDMA that totaled 350 grams. “These operations are very fast and common,” says one of the police officers who participated in the investigation and who has also seized the same substance in liquid, pill or powder form—known as pink cocaine— in a traffic always related to organized crime, which moves them to the south of Spain by road or parcel.
This action, from last August, is the daily life of the retail group of the National Police station in Marbella. It is also the case of other units spread along the Costa del Sol in Malaga along its more than 70 kilometers of coastline from Torremolinos to Estepona, which are home to many nightlife areas with dozens of pubs, discos or beach clubs. They represent the epicenter of designer drugs in the south of Spain, as highlighted in the latest report by the Special Anti-Drug Prosecutor’s Office, which highlights the “significant sale” of MDMA, MDA and MDEA on the Malaga coast. The National Police, in fact, has carried out several operations during the last year with some of the largest recent seizures in the country, some exceeding 50 kilos, a considerable amount for these substances. Added to these are a constant trickle of small interventions on retail, requisitioning thousands of pills in recent months in coastal towns. Police sources highlight the greater presence of the call pink cocainewhich is actually a mixture of MDMA, ketamine, and caffeine.
Carlos Tejada, anti-drug prosecutor in Marbella, ratifies the lines of last year’s report and maintains that the presence of these drugs will increase in 2023: “They are a big problem,” he explains to EL PAÍS, and then points out that these compounds —psychostimulants generated in laboratories—pose a serious danger to health since the consumer does not really know what they are taking. “It is a cheap drug, which causes a lot of damage and is present in nightlife: it is the perfect cocktail,” emphasizes an agent who has been investigating the proliferation of this type of substance on the Malaga coast for more than a decade. A place that, in addition to being an importer, has also taken a relevant role as an exporter to Latin America: at the end of 2022, a ship carrying 56 kilos of MDMA from the Costa del Sol to Argentina was intercepted, which would have been used to produce between 800,000 and 1 .2 million pills, which in the South American country would have a value close to 30 million dollars (about 28.5 million euros).
The Prosecutor’s Office points directly to Puerto Banús and other leisure areas on the Costa del Sol as places where these drugs move the most, as occurs in other popular party tourist destinations such as the Balearic Islands or the Spanish Levante, also protagonists of large operations in the last years. Researchers focus their attention on large leisure areas. They do it going unnoticed, invisible work that is reinforced on weekends and holidays, as well as practically all summer. It is precisely those who work at night who are most related to the sale or act as intermediaries between sellers and buyers. Sometimes they offer it as another service. “They approach clients informing them that they have these substances available in their premises,” say police sources, who affirm that their investigations usually start from neighborhood information, complaints or even social networks.
From retail to international traffic
The fight against retail is the first step to ending the trafficking of designer drugs. It is what allows us to detect sellers, the last link; but also to those who supply them with large quantities. The ladder of command rises little by little and the initial clues sometimes serve to dismantle, months later, an entire criminal organization. The retail groups give way to others such as the Drug and Organized Crime Unit (UDYCO), who carry out longer-term and larger-scale investigations, already specialized in drug trafficking given the large number of international gangs settled in the area. This work made it possible to dismantle last spring a criminal organization based in Mijas and made up of people who traveled to the center of Europe by plane and returned loaded with suitcases in cars. They pretended to be delivery drivers and took the luggage to a house where up to 100,000 MDMA pills were found, worth more than one million euros.
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Road transport is, in fact, the most common way to take it from the clandestine laboratories of origin, generally located in the Netherlands, Germany, Poland and other states further east, although there are also facilities of this type on Spanish soil such as the one It was dismantled last year on the outskirts of Barcelona, where 336 kilos of MDMA and large quantities of substances such as amphetamines or ecstasy were seized, in addition to several weapons. The tiny size of this merchandise makes it easy to go unnoticed: a thousand pills fit in any space in a car. Other times they arrive by parcel. A medium-sized envelope is enough to send a bag with hundreds of units without attracting attention.
The substance regularly detected by police officers is MDMA, produced through different chemical components – called precursors and which are also the subject of police surveillance – that are also found in similar drugs such as MDA or MDEA. It is generally purchased in pills, whose average price is around twelve euros, according to police data. It is also found in liquid and even solid format – like the rock seized this past summer in Marbella – which the seller turns into small pieces that are sold for about 40 euros per gram and consumed transformed into powder. The modality that has increased its presence the most, however, is the so-called pink cocaine, so called because of its striking color and because its appearance is similar to that drug, although in reality its base is MDMA. Its price is the most expensive: 65 euros per gram. “It is the biggest difference: if in the rest of the cases there are consumers of all types and profiles, in this case they tend to be people with greater purchasing power,” police sources point out. They also highlight the strong increase in the presence of nitrous oxide – known as laughing gas – and conclude that other substances, such as the so-called monkey dust or fentanyl at the moment do not have a presence on the Costa del Sol.
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