An order for fish and another for coca

One of the retail outlets in El Puerto de Santa María was equipped with surveillance cameras to monitor the arrival of the police.

He was almost a contemporary muleteer and, like the old saying, they found him along the way.

With a van instead of a mule, a fishmonger from Cádiz took advantage of his route through the towns of the Sierra de Cádiz to distribute cocaine with the same regularity and freshness with which he distributed his goods.

This itinerary between small white villages loaded with orders for fish and coca has become the common thread for which 29 people have been arrested, accused of nurturing a drug retail network in which a coupon holder also participated, which distributed the same luck that drugs, and two soldiers from the Rota base who helped finance the business.

This 30-year-old fishmonger, living in the Cadiz town of Paterna de Rivera, is the main link of the

, so laborious that it has taken the National Police almost a year of investigation.

The agents of the Narcotics Group of the El Puerto de Santa María police station could hardly imagine that the thread they pulled at the end of 2019 when they discovered three very active points of drug retail in the city would be so long.

10 months later, the investigations add 29 detainees, 1,860 grams of cocaine, 421 plants and 1,500 marijuana buds, 170,000 euros in cash and up to 200 anabolic tablets.

That, added to 15 vehicles, a revolver and four hunting rifles with silencers and telescopic sights, is what the police have located in 18 records in El Puerto, Puerto Real, Arcos de la Frontera, Paterna de Rivera and the Sevillian town of Lebrija.

"We started the investigation by retail and then we saw that one of the points was linked to the other and, as a result, one of the workers was in charge of locating the suppliers," says one of the researchers who coordinated the operation.

The tentacles that the network was capable of extending were in evidence when, in a state of alarm over the coronavirus crisis, that El Puerto employee turned to cocaine suppliers in Lebrija to cover the shortage of drugs in his usual circuits.

The suspects in this Sevillian municipality were the first to fall into the first phase of the operation that took place in June, but the Sierra clan still had material to move around the towns.

The Paterna fishmonger was the usual supplier of the El Puerto retail outlets.

Also from other nearby towns, such as Arcos, Puerto Real or La Barca de la Florida, a district of Jerez de la Frontera.

The latter was where the businessman had his business headquarters and where he loaded his van with orders for cocaine, hidden in loads of fish.

The shopkeeper also supplied drugs to small traffickers in La Barca.

One of them was a coupon seller and two soldiers from the Rota Base collaborated with others.

The latter two financed the purchase of cocaine from the camels and "later recovered the money with interest," according to the investigator, who was able to unmask the second military occupation thanks to the collaboration of the Intelligence Service of the Spanish Navy.

In the Sierra, the distribution of hidden coca between orders for fish ended in September, at which point both the businessman and the El Puerto clan fell.

By then, the police had already verified that the delivery man fed his van with drugs that were provided by a clan from Jerez de la Frontera, located in the La Granja neighborhood and whose leader is an old acquaintance of the agents with a police record.

On October 17, he and two other family members who collaborated with the business were arrested.

All of them ran houses that served as points of sale equipped with armored doors and that were interconnected between them to flee in case of being involved in a raid.

The ruse was of little use to them to avoid being caught.

Most of the members of this large retail cooperative displayed discretion that was unusual in other drug territories, such as Campo de Gibraltar.

“They are from the Sierra so they had their fields.

They didn't make big displays, but they had vehicles that couldn't be paid for if it weren't for this, ”says the policeman.

So much so that although the Court of Instruction Number 2 of El Puerto has already decreed provisional prison for five of the 29 detainees, the investigation is still far from over.

The

is ongoing now focused on identifying the sources, flows and whereabouts of the profits.

And for now they have already blocked 31 bank accounts - with an approximate balance of 100,000 euros - and ten homes, 28 vehicles and a boat have been seized.

Never have fish ports been so profitable.