The oldest judicial procedure in Spain has finally been heard for sentencing. 25 years after its beginning, the last survivors of the smuggling ring known as Nené Barral case They sat in the dock this Monday. Among them, the leader is no longer there, the man who gave the operation its name and who was mayor of Ribadumia (Pontevedra) for almost 20 years, until his arrest in 2001. Barral died in November 2023. He did not have time to see the end of the cause, but also not to contemplate how his most outstanding student, Rafael Louzán, the one who started as a janitor in the city council and ended up at the head of the Pontevedra Deputation, reached the greatest share of power in Spanish football by being crowned president of the Federation.
The investigation began at the end of the 20th century, in 1999. It was opened by the head of the Investigative Court number 1 of Vilagarcía, Judge José Antonio Vázquez Taín. At that time, Taín was not yet the media magistrate that he is today, with his usual interventions in television programs and documentary series, especially after his role in the Asunta Basterra cases or the theft of the Calixtino Codex. But I already pointed out ways. At the trial, one of the lawyers accused the “instructor’s desire for prominence” of the “ordeal” suffered by the defendants.
The case began with 43 defendants, but ended up being reduced to twelve. Of them, only eight were able to attend that oral hearing held in the fourth section of the Pontevedra Court. Among the deceased, in addition to the alleged ringleader, were Civil Guard and customs agents.
One of the survivors is Feliciano Barral, brother and lieutenant of Nené and former president of the PP of Ribadumia. Like the rest of the accused, he refused to testify before the judge, but did not give up his final argument: “I want to live because I have been suffering and suffering and suffering for 24 years.” Another of his companions, José Manuel Sotelo, insisted on that idea: “I have been suffering this ordeal for 25 years, I have no strength left.”
unsatisfactory ending
After waiting for so long, the final result is anticipated to be very poor. The reason, an order issued by the Pontevedra Court on February 1, 2023, which annulled the wiretapping of the mayor’s telephone on which the accusation was based. Curiously, that same month, Independientes por Ribadumia, the party created by the Barrals after their expulsion from the PP, and which had governed the town since 2015, announced its integration into the popular formation.
The three customs surveillance agents who testified at the Hearing could not refer to the wiretapping, so their contribution was limited. Even so, in his conclusions, the prosecutor maintained the requests for a sentence of between two and three years in prison and fines of between 1.8 and 15 million euros for the crime of smuggling. Specifically, it refers to the stash of more than 400,000 packs of brand tobacco. Special Magnum introduced in four containers in the port of Vigo. Added to this are other sanctions, of 5,400 euros, for the revelation of secrets by public officials.
25 years later, this is all that can be attributed to some defendants who, according to the Prosecutor’s Office, “according to other people of Portuguese, Dutch, Swiss, Croatian, North American, English and Polish nationality, have been integrating in Europe and Spain. , mainly in the Galician Autonomous Community (in the provinces of A Coruña and Pontevedra) from 1996 to May 2001, an organized, stable group with international projection, and defined assignment of tasks and hierarchy among its members, with the purpose of seeking the introduction into Spain and into the territory of the European Union of important consignments of manufactured tobacco of non-EU origin, by sea and land, as well as as through container”. For the Public Ministry, Barral had already been responsible in 1997 for the introduction of 1.7 million packs from Senegal.
The prosecutor himself acknowledged that “it is not logical” to be trying this case 25 years later, in an “absolutely abnormal” situation. The defenses also did so when they requested the free acquittal of the accused.
“It is an exceptional case, but in a very exaggerated way it exemplifies better than any other all the evils of justice,” reflects the president of the Galician Foundation against Drug Trafficking, Fernando Alonso, before insisting on the historical demands of the entity: “Agility in Justice, police specialization and reduce the infinite number of appeals that defenses are allowed to present.”
In a 2025 that started with several consecutive operations against drug trafficking, a trial for tobacco smuggling is almost a relic and Alonso also sees it that way. “This is the reflection of a time, which fortunately is in the past, where there was a social justification for an activity that later became a totally different one, an infinitely more serious crime.” Despite the difference between the two, he does not forget that “the origin of drug trafficking in Galicia are those smuggling networks that were perfectly oiled and functioning, some of whose leaders committed the aberration of jumping from tobacco to drugs.” Something that did not happen with the Barrals, but it did with many others.
Louzan and Rajoy
When Nené was arrested, the office of Minister of the Interior was occupied by a prominent PP militant from Pontevedra: Mariano Rajoy. For this reason, Nené went to the grave convinced that he had been betrayed. When he was caught, he was considered a tobacco smuggling legend. Raised in the shadow of Vicente Otero, Terito —a personal friend of Manuel Fraga and also a member of the PP, so much so that he was the one who bought the party headquarters in Cambados—, only another name in the sector provoked as much respect as his: that of Marcial Dorado. The rest—the Oubiña, Miñanco and company—had given up tobacco to turn to drug trafficking. Over time, Dorado would also do it, but, according to the testimony of both, when he was no longer a friend of the current president of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo.
Despite the presence of Rajoy in the Interior and the fact that Nené’s activity outside of politics was an open secret – which did not prevent him from chaining four absolute majorities -, the chronicles of the time recount the enormous surprise with which the Galician PP welcomed the arrest of the mayor just a few months before the regional elections. Among the most stunned was Louzán himself, who was a councilor in Ribadumia, provincial president of the party and vice president of a Pontevedra Deputation that he would go on to lead a year later.
This is what Xosé Hermida told it then in The Country: “Louzán was not only surprised by the arrest but also by the discovery that for two years he had been listed—unbeknownst to him, he says—as a director of one of Nené’s companies. Louzán did admit to having been a partner for a few months in another firm owned by Feliciano Barral, brother of the mayor, local president of the PP and also arrested in Monday’s anti-smuggling operation.” The oral hearing that will close the case caught him in the Southern Cone, visiting the soccer federations of Argentina and Uruguay with his sights set on the 2030 World Cup.
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