A bedroom dedicated to Egypt, another to classical Greece, one to the movie
Scarface
(1983) and a garden with a pool festooned with a totem pole and resin parrots. Only the narco Francisco RD,
El Pincho
, will know why he made his mansion in La Línea de la Concepción (Cádiz) an ode to that "bacchanal of forgeries in the realm of the artificial" to which Alaska sang in
Más es más
. Perhaps it is because of an inferiority complex or because of the desire to show off from someone who had barely had
enough
to eat before, but in the drug traffickers of the Strait of Gibraltar “everything is
brilli brilli”,
as a civil anti-drug guard jokes. So much so that the periodic images of police records become a kind of architectural catalog of excesses and impossible decorations with their own stamp. This is the
narco-style
manual of
the south.
So many are the operations against drug trafficking that take place in the province of Cádiz and its surroundings –980 detainees and 133 tons of hashish in 2020, only in Campo de Gibraltar– that agents and prosecutors in the area end up remembering them for the piece or detail of its most bizarre and
kitsch
interior design
. From the house of El Pincho, registered in the summer of 2020, its headboard dedicated to Tutankhamun who presided over the room dedicated to Egypt has already become famous. “We have come across houses with armchairs with ostrich legs, mother-of-pearl handrails, robotic kitchens or bedrooms painted in very strong colors. You go in and say: but does this exist? It is an inordinate ostentation that hurts the eyes, ”says Macarena Arroyo, Campo de Gibraltar drug prosecutor.
Civil Guard agents during the operation deployed in La Línea in June 2020 in 'Villanarco', an urbanization built by traffickers in which more than 30 people were arrested and luxurious illegal villas were searched.A.Carrasco Ragel / EFE
It was what the agents must have asked themselves in a raid in 2016, when they entered a villa in the Guadacorte urbanization (Los Barrios). There they came across the powerful narco Isco Tejón Carrasco, alias
Castaña
and one of the great traffickers of the Strait, had turned the house into a swapping room for couples equipped with a round bed –in the Mazmorra room–, a strip bar and wallpaper of golden apricots. "It's what you have not knowing what to spend the money on," summarizes Arroyo. That house dedicated to the most psychopathic hedonism was hidden from view of the curious behind a high stone wall, marked out by security cameras and opened only by a large iron gate.
That external aesthetic of impregnable strength is recurrent in El Zabal, a rural neighborhood full of illegal villas built for more than a decade with money from hashish. Only the slate roofs stand out on the intricate paths that become mousetraps for the stranger. When the agents burst the gates, opulence arrives in the form of modern buildings, white walls and large windows. The pool, the bigger the better, is a basic. Also the large bedrooms with dressing rooms and rooms or exteriors prepared for parties. "They copy them from soccer players' houses in La Moraleja," says a civil guard. Arroyo adds: “They are impressive. That can not be discussed". Another thing is how those buildings are covered, erected outside of any urban planning.
One of the houses registered to drug traffickers in the Campo de Gibraltar had a railing with the Versace Medusa screen-printed on the staircase, one of the brands preferred by traffickers.
"On the outside they have the architecture of a normal little vest, but on the inside there are strange things," analyzes Víctor Gómez, architect and owner of the Doble G studio, after analyzing images of records released by the police at the request of ICON Design. Rare is the dressing room - always packed with brand-new tracksuit clothes - that doesn't look full of crystals and LED lights; the children's bedrooms themed with princesses and superheroes; purple or pink kitchens; the gold faucets and the Versace medusa or the Gucci logo printed on bedding and even glass railings. “A lot of signature furniture is appreciated, but I don't know if they are copies. There are chairs that could be valued at 4,000 or 5,000 euros, "said Gómez.
Arroyo, used to seeing houses that are later priced at more than 700,000 euros, attests that much of the treasured is not forgeries: "In a chalet we found a crystal table lamp that cost 5,000 euros." The prosecutor is used to running into "silver-colored dogs" in many homes that lead her to believe that drug traffickers can pull the same decorator in an area where, for years, a multitude of furniture stores have filled their windows with glitters and golds. Gómez refuses to call that professional interior design: "It's more like filling than filling." “If there is a narco decorator, it is clear that he does not care about consistency. An idea and a team are missing ”, says Elisa Sánchez Marín, an interior architect who works with Gómez at the Le Tissú firm.
The changing rooms of strong colors such as purple, the LED lights and the crystal decorations are a regular feature in the anti-drug operations of the Strait.
Behind those interiors with histrionic winks, in which a garden is dedicated to Buddha as well as a room to Morocco - crowded with silk cushions and bulky curtains - there are those who defend that something more than rapid money laundering is hidden. “The drug traffickers here belong to the most disadvantaged social classes. They have been brought up with the idea that power comes from money and they have created criminal organizations with a way of life parallel to the rest of society. They have a huge inferiority complex. The drug
trafficker
feels humiliated outside of his
drug world
, he doesn't fit in, "said Miguel Ángel Ramos, civil guard, secretary of communication in Cádiz of the AUGC association and a history graduate.
With no experience in drug trafficking clients, but in what is known (sometimes contemptuously) as the
nouveau riche
, the architect Gómez clarifies: “Sometimes, it is difficult to convey to those who have lived between hardships that more is not always better. Some have the idea that you should show your friends how much you have. The problem is that, in the case of traffickers, the artifice breaks down as soon as they are arrested. And the headache is not only for them. On the other hand, after complex asset investigations, agents and prosecutors come up against the complexity of seizing real estate that, legally, does not exist as it is built outside of planning. “They are like ghosts. All in all, we appraise them inside and out ”, says Arroyo.
One of the last houses registered in La Línea, belonging to the 'Polo' clan, had a fiber elephant that supplied water to the swimming pool.
The roads of El Zabal are no longer what they used to be.
Gone is the time when the narco was the king of the place to the point of putting policemen or journalists in trouble.
Now many of those opulent slate-roofed houses have long looked empty.
But in OCON SUR - the Civil Guard body dedicated to fighting drug trafficking in Andalusia - they know that luxury is still alive, although more hidden if possible.
After all, the large fiber elephant in the garden of
Polo's
chalet
- one of the last drug traffickers in La Línea to fall after a raid last April - was still supplying a huge pool with its trunk.