The weed no longer lets you see the forests

They set up a camp in the purest style of Colombian drug traffickers.

They deployed tarps attached to the trunks of a dense pine forest, covered them with vegetation and, underneath, installed everything necessary to dry the plants.

They installed a pipe to capture water from a ditch of the Chíllar River in Nerja (Málaga, 21,450 inhabitants).

And they set up a camping area to cook and sleep.

All this after deforesting two hectares in the heart of the Sierras de Tejeda, Alhama and Almijara Natural Park where they could plant marijuana.

So much so that when the Civil Guard arrived they found almost 500 kilos of dried buds and another ton already packaged ready for transport.

“The materials had to be brought by helicopter, because they weigh a lot and it is a place of ravines more than two hours walk from any trail,” say the surprised agents who participated in Operation Camp last fall.

Rural areas have become mafia favorites.

The more insulation, the better.

They only need a remote place, a river from which to collect water, a forest that is not difficult to cut down, and good orientation to obtain many hours of sun.

This is a solid business – it avoids intermediary costs – and safe, because it limits exposure to security forces.

It also has low prison sentences.

“And it gives many benefits,” emphasizes the special anti-drug prosecutor of Marbella, Carlos Tejada: a kilo costs 1,000 euros in Spain and can reach 9,000 in northern Europe.

For this reason, numerous criminal groups have left the complex trafficking of cocaine and hashish to dedicate themselves to cannabis.

“The most worrying thing is that they are usually guarded by armed people,” says the latest report from the Prosecutor's Office in Andalusia.

In 2020, for example, three guards were injured when they were shot on land where cannabis grew in Cádiz.

There, in Malaga or Almería, operations against marijuana in rural areas are frequent thanks to their good climate.

But in recent years they are everywhere.

Even in areas where spring offers snowfall, such as in the Pyrenees.

“I always thought that we wouldn't have any here, but to my surprise there are already tons of plantations,” says Mossos d'Esquadra sub-inspector Cèsar Jou, head of the Criminal Investigation Division of the Alt Pirineu i Aran, where only in 2023 did they dismantle one dozen plantations and eight tons were involved ready to distribute, that is, 27 tons of plants.

“Since 2018, its presence has increased significantly,” emphasizes Jou, “but it occurs in many other territories,” he warns.

The Civil Guard, for example, seized 32,370 kilos of buds in Castilla-La Mancha in November 2022. It is the last year with data published in the Annual Statistics on Drugs, which reflects the great growth of crops of the plant in Spain.

“Spain has become a country that produces marijuana and cannabis derivatives,” stressed the Ministry of the Interior to argue for the launch, in November 2021, of the National Action Plan against Crime Associated with the Production and Trafficking of Marijuana.

The number of kilos seized by security forces has quadrupled in the last five years to reach 126,000 in 2022. The growth is led by Valencia — where the amount multiplied by 11, going from less than 5,000 to almost 55,000 kilos of buds — and Catalonia, which went from 5,300 to 36,700 in the same period.

The intervened plants reached almost three million in 2022, more than triple that of 2018. “The increase is exponential year after year,” insists one of the agents of the Roca de la Axarquía Group, east of Malaga, where in 2023 there has been a twenty Civil Guard operations in as many small municipalities.

One of the most striking operations, Abulaga, was born last summer when Environmental agents warned that a firefighting pond was emptying at a disconcerting rate.

The Civil Guard verified the existence of a pump that stole water and took it to Sierra Bermeja, where an area of ​​high ecological value - close to the place where the fire burned 15,000 hectares in 2021 and 2022 - had been deforested to cultivate a thousand floors.

There were three detainees.

At the same time, the Civil Guard arrested another 14 people involved in the cultivation of 12 tons of marijuana in a forest in the Aragonese Pyrenees, where 12,000 plants were found during Operation Captum, carried out in the regions of Sobrarbe and Ribagorza (Huesca). where a year before, 44,382 plants were intervened in nine remote, almost inaccessible places in Operation Periculum.

In both cases they had cut down trees and razed the forest mass to have more growing space.

In the same autumn of 2022, the Mossos d'Esquadra dismantled another large plantation in Forat de Bulí (Lleida) where traffickers had cut down 220 trees and left a hundred more without branches.

The list of recent police actions in isolated areas is endless: Tarragona, Girona, Seville, León, Ciudad Real...

Isolation, water and sun

For security forces that work in the rural world, such as those that make up the 140 Roca Groups in all the autonomous communities, except the Basque Country and Catalonia, investigations related to marijuana are now almost routine.

These teams were born in 2011 to expressly monitor thefts in agricultural and livestock farms, but the agents explain that they have gone from finding small crops for self-consumption to large areas with thousands of specimens promoted by international organizations.

Mainly, they are Albanian, Polish, Chinese, Dutch or Spanish.

Sometimes no one notices that they arrive or that they leave.

“They try to go unnoticed, they don't want problems with anyone,” explains an experienced National Police officer.

The operations carried out by criminal organizations respond to similar characteristics.

The usual thing is for a trusted person to explore a territory until he finds the right place.

It must have three main requirements.

The first, the isolation of residential areas or trails, hence why they prefer regions affected by depopulation.

The second, a water course - extracted with pumps and generators, given the high needs of thousands of plants - and, the third, an orientation that allows the maximum number of hours of sun.

They also select forests that are not very dense to facilitate forest clearing, which they carry out with axes and chainsaws.

They recycle the wood obtained to build their camps, tables, chairs or beds, as well as the ponds where they store water and mix it with growth and flowering fertilizers.

Sometimes they also build greenhouses with opaque canvas that they open and close to speed up the harvest.

Then they break the soil, plant and maintain.

After harvesting, they dry the buds in the same place and vacuum pack them.

They then store them and distribute them, little by little, in vehicles towards northern Europe.

“It is a huge effort, but they are becoming more specialized.

And they learn: before they made a large plantation with 15,000 or 20,000 specimens.

Now they prefer several plots of 2,000 or 3,000 plants.

They know that some will fall, but they ensure the rest,” underlines sub-inspector Cèsar Jou, who led an operation at the end of last year in which 27,000 plants were found, which on the market would have a value of 49 million euros.

As in others, there were personnel who remain in the area to work on the harvest.

Its activity contaminates the soil through the use of chemical fertilizers that can affect flora and fauna and damages the environment through deforestation or the modification of the course of streams for the irregular extraction of water.

It also generates numerous waste—iron, plastic bags, bottles, food scraps, butane cylinders, tools and even solar panels—and poses a great risk of fire due to the use of generators, but also because the guards tend to smoke.

Police agents highlight the difficulties in detecting these crops, because sometimes not even drones find them.

Not only because of the isolation, but also because guarding in the middle of the forest entails numerous problems.

Among them are security measures, such as “the reinforcement of perimeter fencing, movement sensors and night vision cameras or video surveillance systems,” according to the report of the Andalusian Prosecutor's Office.

There are also gangs that set up traps in the surrounding area.

Whether it's a simple hidden rope that rings a bell when you step on it, or mechanisms that activate tubes loaded with cartridges.

“We have an agent with a leg full of pellets,” Jou emphasizes.

The presence of weapons is increasingly common among the personnel who guard and maintain the facilities, especially due to fear of robberies by rival gangs.

That is why he gives advice: “If someone comes across one of these plantations, do not approach it or take photos.

Let him leave and then let us know.

It is very dangerous,” he concludes.

Maria greenhouses

The use of greenhouses is also growing for the cultivation of marijuana, either in isolated areas in natural spaces such as those installed in agricultural areas of Almería or Axarquía in Malaga.

Also in depopulated areas, criminal organizations try to use isolated country houses and farmhouses.

They rent them and take advantage of all the rooms—and any available corner, even the bathroom—to place pots and grow up to five annual crops.

They are also increasingly specialized crops that start from illegal connections to power lines.

From there, they install 600-watt LED lamps, power multipliers, air extractors, fans, carbon filters to prevent odors, and drip irrigation systems.

Hydroponic systems have also already been detected, which reuse water not out of environmentalism, but to visit the plantation as little as possible to avoid risks.  

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