The Strait of Gibraltar, traffic boulevard

Published on : 24/07/2020 – 11:17

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In the far south of the Iberian Peninsula, facing the Moroccan coast, the Strait of Gibraltar has become a drug highway. Strategic point of the traffic between Europe and Africa, it is delivered to the incessant ballet of “go fast”, these speedboats loaded with hashish and cocaine speeding by at full speed to escape police checks. Our reporters went to the Spanish side, to the city of La Línea de la Concepción, to meet some residents who are closely involved in drug trafficking, whether they participate in it or fight it.

During the 1970s, drug traffickers made the Strait of Gibraltar their anchor point in Europe. Fifty years later, they seem to have won the fight against the police.

They are at the head of an empire akin to the management of freight transport companies. On the 14 km of sea that separate Spain from Morocco, they ship more than 280 tonnes of drugs per month. About 80% of the hashish consumed in Europe passes through here.

The strait remains uncontrollable

To fight against this illegal trade, the Spanish state launched in 2018 a security plan called “Campo de Gibraltar”. At the beginning of July, this plan was allocated an additional 48.2 million euros and extended until the end of December 2021.

These efforts have led to an increase in arrests in recent years. However, all players in the sector agree that the strait remains uncontrollable.

We will first board the helicopter of Pedro Luis Bardon. For more than thirty years, this emeritus pilot has been chasing drug-laden boats in the Strait… His acrobatic figures as close as possible to the traffickers have earned him a role in the film “El Nino” by Daniel Monzón, released in 2014.

Julio, an “organizer” who has no regrets

We will also meet the one we will call Julio. As he approaches sixty, this father is, according to the jargon of his sector, an “organizer”. After having learned from an early age in cigarette trafficking, he now manages from the Spanish coast a cocaine and hashish trafficking network installed in Morocco. In his eyes, everything has a price, even human beings. In this region where the unemployment rate reaches 40%, money has the power to corrupt and radically change lives, including his own and that of his family. This is the reason why he assures that he does not regret his choice of life, although it has earned him several years in prison.

Finally, we will follow José Manuel, a young retired police officer who has dedicated his life to the fight against drug trafficking. Even today, in the corridors of the police, he is nicknamed “chief”. Infiltrated for ten years in Morocco, he prides himself on having convinced Pablo Escobar, the famous Colombian cocaine trafficker, not to settle there.

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