A Civil Guard patrol boat navigates the mouth of the Guadalquivir River in an archive image. JUAN CARLOS TORO
A 47-year-old man died this Wednesday afternoon in Cádiz after the semi-rigid boat in which he was traveling collided with a Civil Guard boat at the mouth of the Guadalquivir River.
Three other people who are detained were traveling with him.
The four occupants were carrying jugs of fuel, an activity known as
petaqueo
that usually serves to supply gasoline to the hashish
drug boats
that wait on the high seas to be able to enter upriver and unload the drugs from Morocco.
The event occurred around 12:00, as sources from the Civil Guard confirmed to EL PAÍS.
The
Río Agueda patrol boat,
from the Maritime Service of the Civil Guard of Cádiz, spotted a 12-meter-long semi-rigid boat that was hoisted at the mouth of the river.
The agents piloting the police boat, who were uninjured, but are “affected by what happened,” approached the boat to check if it was a hashish drug boat.
At that moment, the four occupants who were resting started the boat to flee, but, for unknown reasons, they collided with the front of the civil guard ship, according to the Armed Institute's account.
After the accident, the agents arrested three of the occupants, but the injuries of the fourth forced him to be transferred to the Sanlúcar hospital.
From there, the man was transferred to the Puerta del Mar hospital in Cádiz, where he died after 6:00 p.m. as a result of the injuries suffered in the crash.
The man was 47 years old and had a police record for smuggling, criminal organization and drug trafficking.
At least one other of the detainees also had a police record, as confirmed by the same sources.
At the time of the event, the RIB was loaded with an unspecified number of fuel drums or flasks.
The illegal activity of
targeting
hashish narco-boats is a growing activity in recent years.
This growth has occurred after the police siege against drug trafficking has forced them to explore new routes and extend their stays at sea, waiting for the best time to introduce drugs to the coast.
Current Spanish regulations do not consider the storage or transportation of large quantities of gasoline as a crime, which is why the Anti-Drug Prosecutor's Office has already demanded a legal reform to prohibit these dangerous movements of gasoline.
The siege on drugs in the Strait has also had the consequence that traffickers have opted for new routes or recovered others, as is the case of the Guadalquivir.
Civil guard associations have been warning for months about this significant increase in activity in the river that flows into Sanlúcar de Barrameda, in addition to denouncing that they barely have the means to stop this significant increase.
Last December, in just one day, the patrol detected up to four drug boats ready to be loaded with gasoline, without being able to do practically anything to prevent their activity.