A year ago, when a Civil Guard patrol from a town in Alicante found themselves. a young Moroccan lying on the streetit was another one on the pavement outbreak of crime phenomenon Incubated in Levante for years. The Moroccan showed many bruises, typical for a severe beating. At the barracks, he told the guards that he had just escaped from an apartment on the beach in San Juan, they had caught him in Murcia, held by two very violent Italiansthat they beat him, that they had submachine guns…
The Moroccan was the keeper of some marijuana his gang had gathered for him. italian gangstersand at one point in the order the Moors had deceived the customers. Angry Italians took him hostage.
Sources consulted with the Police and the Civil Guard, a Post-embryonic stage of implantation of Cosa Nostra, Camorra and ‘Ndrangheta’ in Spain. Especially Calabrian, who led the mafia world in the face of the fall of the first and the violent disorder of the second. This country has long ceased to be just a hiding place for when the Guardia di Finanza tightens its grip on Calabria, Sicily, Naples, Milan or Rome. It’s been ten years since Spain was confirmed as an important country. Foreign base of Italian organized crime operations.
Left
The Alicante case is a symptom and the recent operations against ‘Ndrangheta’ in Spain are a model. The blow inflicted on this organization by the Civil Guards and the Italian police on September 12 is very big for him. massive character -32 detainees-, as for their rights distribution – 40 registrations in Ibiza, Tenerife, Barcelona and Malaga – and the way to money.
The net was devoted to cocaine—it held almost five kilos—, amphetamines—18 kilos—, marijuana—600 plants—and marijuana logistics. AND for bleach they invested their money in bricks.
The National Police has done enough operations against the expatriate mafias so that Udyco (The Unit Against Drugs and Organized Crime) has a special Group Against Italian Mafias and Balkan Cartels. infiltration in spain.
Sources from this unit confirm that the mafia colonies here make a profit by buying apartments and villas in tourist areas, Madrid and Barcelona. “They’re buying real estate, buildings, hotels, open businesses, Italian restaurants here,” says the police source. This contamination of the legal economy is of great concern from the anti-mafia fight.
An Italian restaurant in Galapagar was run by Sicilian mafia Gioacchino Gammino, an opponent of Cosa Nostra. When police found him on January 22, after 20 years on the run, he had turned another business in the name of Manuel Mormino into a greengrocer in the same town of Madrid.
pasquale bonavotaA wanted member of the ‘Ndrangheta’ – perhaps hiding in a corner of Calabria or, if he lives, in a villa on our Mediterranean coast – was negotiating to buy an Italian video game company in 2018. deleted from the map.
Bonavota provides specifications for a portrait of the runaway Calabrian gangster. he is a murderer sentenced to life imprisonment. Violence colored his life. As a teenager, he found himself in the middle of an armed conflict on his own soil that became known as the ‘Epiphany massacre’. In the village of Sant’Onofrio, on the Day of the Three Kings in 1991, members of a rival clan from the neighboring village of Stafanaconi raided the church of Maria Santissima delle Grazie with pistols and a Kalashnikov rifle. They were looking for the Bonavota. Two of Pasquale’s relatives died in the square and eleven were injured. The boy would come of age by watching his clan devise and execute revenge. Six years later, his father, Vincenzo, was also assassinated.
invisible
Bonavota is lying in a tomb or perhaps contemplating retirement somewhere in the world. Interpol describes ‘Ndrangheta’ as the only Italian criminal organization with infrastructure on five continents.
Therefore, there are many haystacks to look for these needles. If Gioacchino Gammino is a pizzeria and a greengrocer in addition to being a fugitive, Mario Palamara was considered a modest tourist living in Fuengirola. He had forged documents and was cycling, wearing shorts, sneakers, and an Armani Exchange t-shirt. When he was arrested by the police on October 11th.
The man, middle-aged, with fake documents, without his wife and children, known to the police, mercenary but very discreet, invisible among the Italian residents on the beach… This is how the police describe the Italian mafia set up in Spain. Priority to go unnoticed.
This last detail explains why the Italian mafia exodus did not develop an equal amount of ‘pizzo’ or collections for the protection of artisans and businessmen in Spain.
Far from being a peaceful immigrant, they have been focusing on Palamara since 2015 four European arrest warrants for drug traffickingmafia association, money launderingfraud and bribery. In the ‘Ndrangheta’ family structure, a good agenda of Colombian suppliers had trained him as a self-employed self-employed beneficiary of importing cocaine into Calabria.
why spain
He could have found a safer haven in Palamara, Cali or Bogota, but here he had to stay. European drug import platform What has become of Spain?
At Udyco, they say ‘Ndrangheta’s boss rarely touches the illegal goods he trades and does not often participate in women’s retail. The important branches of that arboreal family structure are rather logistics of major drug trafficking or arms trafficking, public contracts, or attacks on other gangs. They drop bundles of cannabis on Moroccan workers who immigrated to Italy, who were brought back to Spain.
But Calabrian relatives continue to be found in the lower echelons of the business. Two of the seven crew members were on the fishing vessel, which was stopped 335 miles from Dakar (Senegal) last February. I just transferred 805 kilos. cocaine a mothership. They brought it to Spain.
It was also found that they were smuggling drugs with a team of Montenegrins while passing through the Canary Islands. Last August, the Tenerife Civil Guard shared a Europol operation to liquidate a group from ‘Ndrangheta’, which had chartered a sailboat with 6.1 tons of cocaine in its hold.
The cement of the Calabrian mafia, blood relation, kinship, antidote to inner betrayal; but its activities are multinational. And for the coca and cannabis trade, the geographical location of this country is very important.
For both the main secret trade and the so-called “bastard offices” that are not recognized by the network, such as the office run by the son of a midsize boss in March of last year. Send 279 balls of cannabis from Malaga to Turin hidden in the false floor of a trailer. One of the police sources is interested in Spain “because of its proximity to Morocco and you can get from Barcelona to Milan in a few hours”.
comfortable
However, the hideout remains a frequent reason to come to Spain, as police crackdown has bitten a key mobster or some meaningful agenda has been taken up. On December 13, many untouched people around the narcotic spot of the Giogia Tauro wharf may have felt an attack when the Guardia di Finanza’s Blue Notte operation resulted in the arrest of 130 mafia members in Calabria and Sicily. you need to come here urgently.
And their names may flow through alerts from the Interpol I-Can network, led by Italian Direzione Investigativa Antimafia, and Europol’s @ON network. In the last three years, among other coups, Arrest of ‘Ndrangheta’ senior leader Domenico Paviaglianiti in August 2021.
Carrying 6,000 euros and using 6 mobile phones, this 60-year-old pensioner was not known to be hiding in Madrid until his whereabouts: He jumped on the information shared about his relatives who hosted him before. him in Barcelona.
Clans may be growing and losing some of the invisibility that they had advantages in Spain. In Torrevieja (Alicante), the Civil Guard Information Service detected a rare roundup of Italians in 2022. Some of them drove to the rendezvous point… with two more cars behind them. Sometimes mafia members hold visible meetings. escort convoys. And this is the opposite of the priority of going unnoticed.