Part of the 460 plants grown indoors in the Carmel district of Barcelona.
"This will never be Mexico," acknowledges a police source about the violence associated with the drug market.
But it does warn of the danger of the deep-rooted cultivation of marijuana in Spain, and above all, in Catalonia, the place where more marijuana is intervened: 12,398 kilos, followed by 9,565 from Andalusia and 4,694 from the Valencian Community, according to 2018 data from the Ministry inland.
A report of the Mossos of March, of 72 pages, warns of the danger that the drug is consolidated, like a parasite, and a “parallel system” is created in Catalonia.
It draws a future rooted “narcoeconomy”, with a “voluntary exclusion from the legal system” of those who benefit from marijuana, and the “creation of a culture and identity of cannabis”.
He cites as examples the Campo de Gibraltar or the Netherlands.
The report, based on police data and Spanish and European studies, starts from a categorical statement: "Catalonia is the epicenter of the illegal marijuana market in Europe."
There is no police operation, of any kind, in which marijuana is not also found.
Between 2013 and 2017, seizures of cannabis plants grew by 538% (from 176,165 to 1,124,674), placing Spain in the first European country producing this drug.
In Catalonia, marijuana has been the most frequently used drug for eight years.
In 2019 alone, the Mossos dismantled 368 plantations.
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One of the consequences is corruption.
"There are more and more police officers appearing in investigations," lament police sources.
In part, they indicate, due to the social acceptance of this drug, considered soft.
"The offender does not always come from the classic drug scene, there is less resistance, and it involves a lot of money," they add.
It also conditions the legal industry that surrounds marijuana, which sees its profits increase and which dedicates part of them to innovating to improve cultivation.
An indoor plantation (65% of those detected by the Mossos), which are usually the most professionalized, uses fertilizers, growth accelerators, light intensity regulators, automatic irrigation systems, ventilation systems ... Los Mossos They have found bulbs with electric motors that move to increase the illuminated surface, domotic crops that are controlled by computer, crops with coconut substrate, or a thousand ways to avoid odors: such as odorless seeds, walls, filters or systems to freeze marijuana already cultivated ...
They have even detected the presence of engineers and electricians in the assembly of plantations in Girona.
In an investigation in Tarragona, they located real estate agencies that offer premises for the indoor cultivation of marijuana.
Added to all this are the
growshops
, which legally sell seeds and fertilizers (in 2016, the Mossos discovered 122 active stores), and cannabis associations, which criminal groups sometimes use to traffic.
The profile of the grower is varied, from the unskilled to organized crime, because production supplies the demand.
But the Mossos warn of the danger that with the increase in demand organized crime will try to control the market, the quality and the price of the drug, which in Spain is one of the lowest in Europe (5.66 euros per gram in Barcelona while the European average is between 7 and 13 euros).
"This is only achieved with violence," warn police sources.
A violence that already exists.
Last week two people were murdered in Lloret de Mar (Girona) and Flix (Tarragona) in conflicts related to marijuana.
The homicides are in addition to the nine accumulated since 2016. The majority are committed in
drug
attacks
, of traffickers who want to steal the crops already grown.
There are those who use drones to locate them before turning
over
.
The cultivators arm themselves to avoid being mugged, which degenerates into more violence.
In March, the Civil Guard was shot at in Riudoms (Tarragona) when it tried to search a warehouse where it was grown.
In six years, the Mossos have dismantled 150 criminal groups that trafficked with this drug, but only in four cases were they able to apply money laundering.
The Catalan police denounce in their report the lack of means to carry out in-depth investigations to prove the
dirty
origin
of the money.
The high profits tend to go to real estate and, the more sophisticated networks, to investments through companies in hospitality and financial products.
A way to Europe run by "some brokers"
"In the coming years the continued parasitization and growth of the marijuana market is expected, unless there is some disruptive element that can stop the inertia of the system," the Mossos say in their 2020 report on this drug. In addition to the acceptance and low penalty for trafficking in marijuana, they point out "facilities" such as "rural depopulation" and the "real estate crisis" to set up outdoor and indoor plantations. But the fundamental element that explains the success of Catalonia is its strategic location, as a gateway to Europe. This means that “marijuana brokers” are installed on the border, linking “markets, territories and criminal networks”. They are intermediaries who buy marijuana from Andalusia or Valencia at 1,800 euros per kilo, take it to Catalonia, and sell it at 2,500. It is a kind of "business bag" with "speculative criteria, according to the degree of trust of the buyer with the producer."