Spanish Police Bust Major Cocaine Smuggling Syndicate
Spain's National Police have taken down a major maritime smuggling ring in a year-long operation, netting more than 100 arrests and more than 10 tonnes of cocaine. The Central Drug and Organized Crime Unit (UDYCO) believes that the blow is enough to "destabilize" the criminal group, though the mastermind remains at large.
Law enforcement officials laid out a map of a sweeping transatlantic crime syndicate involving speedboats, burner phones, payoffs, multiple storage houses and "state of the art electronic devices intended for maritime trafficking." The speedboat gang specialized in retrieving cocaine from small smuggling vessels up to 1,000 miles off the coast of Spain, then delivering it to riverine bases on the Rio Guadalquivir and other rivers around the region. Their operating area extended all around the Iberian peninsula and beyond, from Galicia to Portugal to Malaga, Morocco and the Canary Islands. Police SWAT teams raided no fewer than 49 locations around the region to carry out the bust, the largest share located on Lanzarote and Gran Canaria.
The raids (conducted in two parts, one in June and one in November) resulted in the seizure of 70 vehicles, 30 boats, six properties, multiple bank accounts, two drones, high-frequency radio jammers, wifi amplifiers, satellite terminals, over 150 mobile phones and various navigational gear. 105 people were arrested in total. In addition, the police raided a distribution center in Campo de Gibraltar, which allegedly supplied the communications and navigation gear for smugglers in the Andalusia region.
<blockquote data-media-max-width="560"><p lang="es" dir="ltr">????Ataque al mayor centro de distribución y lavado de activos del Campo de <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Gibraltar?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Gibraltar</a><br><br>????????Detenidas 105 personas tras desarticular la organización que dominaba el tráfico de <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/drogas?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#drogas</a> con <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/narcolanchas?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#narcolanchas</a> en el <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Atl%C3%A1ntico?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Atlántico</a> <br><br>??En el último año introdujeron en <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Europa?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Europa</a> unos 57.000 kilos… <a href="https://t.co/PGxKAi4Egw">pic.twitter.com/PGxKAi4Egw</a></p>— Policía Nacional (@policia) <a href="https://twitter.com/policia/status/2015739939057475871?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 26, 2026</a></blockquote>
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According to the police, the gang took great pains to hide its communications. They used encryption, satellite connectivity and coded language to coordinate their operations, and generally worked by night to reduce the odds of detection. Remarkably, the gang set up "platforms" to support continuous operations at sea, giving boat operators a place to rest and conduct crew changes. Smaller supply boats would bring gasoline and food, and others would act like pickets, watching for the patrol vessels of Spanish law enforcement and giving early warnings. This was not a small scale enterprise: the police believe that the ring brought 57 tonnes of cocaine into Europe in 2025 alone - enough to meaningfully affect the drug market.
These operations were not always safe. The speedboat runs were conducted at 40 knots in littoral waters, and more than one crash occurred during a hot pursuit. In one instance, a gang member was killed aboard a boat when it crashed on the Guadalquivir River in 2024, and the leader of the syndicate allegedly paid out more than $14 million to the family of the deceased in order to buy their silence.
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