In a police operation that remains ongoing and classified as secret by authorities, five individuals were arrested in Alicante, with one more taken into custody in the Elche district. The operation, still under seal, unfolded as investigators linked the group to a drug trafficking network.
Shipping to other countries
Law enforcement identified the detainees as part of an Albanian drug trafficking network believed to plan distributing cocaine across European markets after its storage in an Alicante warehouse. The operation was carried out with the collaboration of national and regional units focused on combating drugs and organized crime.
Teams from Alicante and Malaga, including the Drugs and Organized Crime Units and the Central UDYCO Special Response Group for Organized Crime, worked alongside judicial police officials. Officers also coordinated with customs authorities in Malaga due to the entry of containers linked to the drug shipment via the port of Malaga.
The five arrested comprise four Albanians who were aboard the vessel carrying the drugs and a Spaniard arrested in the Altet area. Four defendants appeared in court in Alicante on Monday, with the remaining suspect appearing in Elche. In both jurisdictions, prosecutors sought admission to prison, and the court on duty granted the request.
Three of those detained were assisted by lawyers Francisco Miguel Galiana Botella, Alicia Grau, and Juan Antonio Espinosa, from the Galiana Abogados firm.
The drugs were seized last Friday amid an operation that began as investigators tracked a shipment destined for destinations beyond Spain. Early inquiries indicated that the cargo was part of a larger trafficking scheme, with the group using legitimate goods as cover for illicit cocaine.
Unloading and evidence
Authorities boarded the ship during unloading to inspect a container that, besides bananas, included pallets containing hundreds of cocaine packages. The containers were unloaded and the cocaine was seized, with detainees transported to the provincial police station for processing. Further searches at residences connected to those involved were carried out, and additional arrests linked to the stash were not ruled out.
The seized shipment weighed more than five tons gross, with a calculated net weight just over 1,900 kilograms, marking it as the largest cocaine warehouse ever seized in the country. Previous records included a 3,734-kilogram gross seizure in Elche in February 2013 and another 3,257 kilograms seized in 2004 in a shipment of bananas in Elche.
The stash found in Alicante points to a strategy by trafficking networks to use Spain as a hub for distributing cocaine to Europe, with efforts to avoid heightened police scrutiny in major ports. Investigators noted that other ports had seen significant seizures as part of a broader pattern of attempts to bypass enforcement at key entry points.
In a related development, authorities reported another major seizure the previous November at the Valencia docks, where 5,592 kilograms of cocaine were found in a banana container. That case underscored the scale of the illicit operation and the ongoing effort to interdict large shipments before they reach European markets.
Officials from the Alicante Provincial Police Station have not released further comments about this operation. The absence of additional confirmations has left some questions unanswered for local media and residents alike, though authorities emphasized the significance of the seizure in disrupting a major cocaine trafficking network.