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The narco heats up the violence again in the Guadalquivir

2022-08-08T15:02:28.816Z


The aggressiveness of the drug traffickers, habitual in the Campo de Gibraltar, tenses an area dominated until now by historical and less conflictive traffickers


The remains of the police car hit by the escape of a drug trafficker in Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Cádiz.Juan Carlos Toro

Pedro NM loaded a bullet into the chamber of his pistol, got into a BMW SUV and, from the prefabricated house where he lived in Chipiona, headed down a dirt road that leads to Guadalquivir itself.

There, on the banks of the river, and helped by a buddy whom he had previously picked up, he loaded 20 bales of hashish—about 600 kilos—wrapped in burlap, wet and smelling of diesel.

Later, the vehicle retraced its tracks to leave the Camino de las Marismas, just as dawn broke on July 28 over the fields of Sanlúcar de Barrameda.

So determined was the trafficker to remove the stash that, when the three policemen who had been following him since the night before stopped him, he stepped on the accelerator until he crashed his car against the agents' car.

“He was going with the intention of killing us, he wanted to get us out of the way,” says Juan —the fictitious name of one of them— a week later, while pointing to the remains of the police Ford Focus, still lying on a bend in the path.

The two smugglers fled on the run.

Pedro NM was arrested in the early afternoon when he was hiding with his partner in a hotel in Jerez.

He is in prison accused of drug trafficking and attempted murder.

The co-pilot is still on the run.

One

point

— a collaborator with drug traffickers to alert them of police movements — was also arrested in the vicinity of the stash.

The event, which is being investigated by the Investigating Court 1 of Sanlúcar, occurred just one day before dozens of people pounced on a boat with 29 sacks of drugs that ran aground on Bonanza beach, in full pursuit with a Customs helicopter.

Not even the low flight of the aircraft deterred bathers from moving away.

“Some watched, others protected the persecuted and others got on board to take one or two bales”, summarizes Javier Bello, head of Customs Surveillance in Andalusia.

The tension of the moment, recorded by several witnesses, is far from the apparent tranquility that is breathed in the area on the morning of Friday the 5th. The mirage of dead calm is broken as soon as someone sniffs what happened.

"Those aren't from here.

Here nothing more than there are fishermen who earn their living.

They are kids who mess it up”, ditch, elusive, a neighbor,

Bonanza, one of the "hot spots" to lighten Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Cádiz.juan carlos Toro

The aggressive response against police and customs officers is reminiscent of past times in the area, before the special security plan put the drug traffickers of Campo de Gibraltar in check and just when the Guadalquivir was known as "the hashish highway".

What's going on?

“Things in Sanlúcar are hot, quite strong.

There are caches almost every day,” interjects one of the chiefs of the Cadiz anti-drug police unit while driving a camouflaged SUV through Monte Algaida, a scattered rural area where drug traffickers became strong years ago.

Next to him, Juan accompanies him, still in pain after having jumped into the median to avoid being run over by Pedro NM “The aggressiveness of the Campo de Gibraltar is infecting them,” he says.

That the Northwest Coast of Cádiz —which includes Sanlúcar, Chipiona and Rota— is becoming more violent is something that the anti-drug prosecutor of Jerez, Andrés Álvarez, has been warning about for three years.

"This is getting out of control and it can get wild," says the prosecutor, worried.

The warnings from the Prosecutor's Office coincide with the time that Pedro, 33, settled in Chipiona, after forging a varied police record sheet in his native Algeciras.

He is an example of that narco from the Strait who, harassed by police pressure, has forged alliances with traffickers from the Northwest Coast to introduce hashish through the labyrinth of marshes, pipes and salt flats that make up the mouth of the Guadalquivir.

“The Campo de Gibraltar never disappeared, it has only dispersed.

Sanlúcar de Barrameda (#Cádiz) is in the news again this week due to drug trafficking.



A Customs helicopter (@aduanassva) after a chase manages to run a narco-boat loaded presumably with hashish.



And what do people do?

⤵️#EquiparacionYa pic.twitter.com/w0zcLCTo8O

– JUPOL (@JupolNacional) July 30, 2022

The forms of the Campogibraltareño narco, younger, aggressive and ostentatious, contrast with those of the Guadalquivir capos, older, discreet to the point of camouflaging themselves with the classic Andalusian gentleman and, until now, somewhat more respectful of the agents.

The experience of El Tomate, El Candela or El Cagalera, accustomed without fuss to being stopped by the police, now lives with "younger people and that inexperience gives them a breath of adrenaline," says Victoriano, spokesperson for the Unified Association of the Civil Guard in the area.

To this the agent adds that "the pressure of European criminal organizations is greater so that the drug reaches a safe port."

Nervous about this demand that collides with a police fence that already covers the entire Andalusian coast, the Guadalquivir drug trafficker has armed himself more, also worried "because the overturns [thefts] between organizations are more common," says the person in charge of the Udyco.

The slogan of the bosses to protect the cache at all costs materializes in the war arsenal that Pedro had in his prefabricated house in Chipiona or in the fact that their henchmen no longer hesitate to "bite" the agents, according to the slang of the latter to refer to an attack.

The climate is prone for the lower echelons of the organizations, those who live in disadvantaged areas like Bonanza, to also launch themselves to do whatever it takes to protect the drug.

“No matter how much pressure is being put on us, we haven't been able to change the mentality of these people,” admits Bello.

A shellfisher in the Algaida area where the drug is stored in Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Cádiz.Juan Carlos Toro

The path of Las Marismas seems calm at noon this past Friday.

Agent Juan meets a farmer who became an accidental witness to that dawn of acceleration, shots in the air and cross-country chases.

"You can still see the marks on the sweet potato crop, he got in there and knocked down the fence," recalls the man, after stopping his moped.

The resident of Monte Algaida does not want problems, but he has spent years seeing how the social climate around him is rotting and he is tired: “We don't want anything with them.

If I want to buy a field to cultivate, I can't because they come and where I give ten million [pesetas, more than 60,000 euros], they give 20. Being on this road is a commitment, they pass with their cars running and who says that nothing can happen to me."

The Sanluqueño is immersed in these explanations when a red car passes at low speed.

"This is one of them, one of those who inform, not one of those who move... Here we all know each other," he adds.

Juan and his boss get in the car, follow him a few meters and write down the license plate.

At the end of the road, the tread marks warn that, probably, after Pedro, someone else has approached an SUV to the same bank of the river.

A tourist boat returns from its tour of the Guadalquivir, the salt flats are already turning from pink to white and, in the background, Doñana completes the landscape.

Upon returning, a man who looks like an idle worker is sitting motionless recording the river with his cell phone.

Juan looks at him from the passenger seat: "It will surely be a

point

[informant of the drug traffickers].

All of Sanlúcar already knows that we are here”.

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Source: elparis

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