Images that appeared after a police operation reveal Europe’s largest cocaine laboratory, linking cartels from Mexico and Colombia with two figures from the Canary Islands, plus a Basque metal dealer and a luxury residence in La Finca near Madrid where celebrities and top football stars live, measuring value by the crowd it attracts per square meter.
In this report, OPEN CASE, the investigation and events channel of Prensa Ibérica, reviews ten months of work conducted by the National Police Central Narcotics Brigade and the Drug Enforcement Prosecutor of the National Court to shed light on previously unknown aspects. The question remains: which cartels were behind the plan that transformed a Galician village home into a drug lab, a setup more typical of the Colombian jungle.
Escobar, Miami.
For weeks, agents watched Hernando Sanchez Reybrother, once an acquaintance of Germán, known as Braids. “This is a major narcotic operation, a key link,” said sources in the fight against drugs who are serving time in the United States. Braids is currently in prison; in Bogotá he worked with cartels and influential people; in Madrid he dealt with powerful figures in Miami. His brother, investigated repeatedly, remained at large. La Finca, on Madrid’s outskirts, is famed for its luxury; it is where many celebrated names mingle with footballers. Cristiano Ronaldo, Fernando Torres, Paloma Cuevas, Alejandro Sanz, and David Bustamante are among those associated with the area.
The head of the organization in Spain lived among the stars at La Finca. With no visible job, authorities spent around 15,000 euros monthly just to monitor him.
The value of a house in the estate ranges from four to twenty million euros, while apartments start at about 900,000 euros. Surrounded by celebrities, including footballers, the family connected to Braids maintained a lavish lifestyle, with private security and discreet routines that allowed them to carry on unnoticed. Central Narcotics Brigade officers researched this area with undercover work and local informants.
Occasionally, officers posed as Amazon couriers or other delivery personnel. At times they acted as wealthy neighbors, and on one occasion they seized luxury cars from other drug operations and used them to blend in.
Connection with the Canary Islands
Braids now sits in prison by order of the National Court, having never traveled to attend his trial. The cocaine lab they set up in a forest near a river, in the village of Cerdedo-Cotobade, Pontevedra, belonged to a Venezuelan national who claimed he sold the house over a year earlier and had no ties to the crime. One detainee in the operation is the partner of his daughter, a figure connected to the Canary Islands cartels. Investigators believe the site was chosen for its proximity to Portugal and the Leixões port, the presumed route to smuggle camouflaged cocaine.
Two narcotics operatives from the Canary Islands were old associates of the Central Narcotics Brigade. Unassuming, low-profile individuals, one had a reform business. They leveraged the owner’s daughter’s connections to pick a Galician chalet for the lab. The drug arrived in a camouflage machine that took three days to access; the machine itself resembled a stone crusher and was densely packed with cocaine. Police specialists later spent more than fourteen hours opening a second unit.
Basque scrap dealer
A new flow is emerging in drug trafficking: the paste is moved to Europe, laboratories are built close to the markets where the drug will be sold, and cocaine production continues in the same region. The Galicia operation marks the largest to date. In this setup, Colombians manage the lab’s logistics while a Mexican group funds the venture and supplies the device used for concealment, according to police reports. The machine reportedly arrived in Spain on behalf of a Basque scrap metal company and was intended to be disposed of after the drug hit the market.
Within the Galician lab, the cooks turned base paste into drugs without contact, living in the facility, working on site, and not leaving the house. Some men even leaned from the window to smoke. The forest lab used a single notary-approved cell phone to document the operation, while others left their phones in a Pontevedra apartment near the courts.
The cooks used precursors to convert base paste into drugs, refined and accelerated cocaine production. Cylindrical devices, nicknamed Martians, were seven in number aboard the Galician vessel. By spring, the laboratory was operating at full capacity.
Father’s Day
A minibus from a well-known transport company carried the lab crew toward Galicia. March 19, Father’s Day, brought a stakeout turn into a major seizure as the National Police halted traffic on a key route near Segovia, capturing a van loaded with boxes of cocaine and styrofoam. A crowd gathered at the highway checkpoint as the operation unfolded.
That same night, officers entered the Galician forest lab and completed ten months of work, arresting the Canary Islands figures, the Basque businessman, the cooks, and Braids at his Madrid luxury home. They had prevented Europe’s largest cocaine laboratory from becoming fully operational, with a production capacity near two hundred kilos of cocaine per cycle.
They also blocked the release of thousands of liters of chemical intermediates, estimated at around 24,000 liters of ether and sulfuric acid, which could have caused extensive pollution. The operation recovered approximately 1,300 kilos of basic cocaine paste and 24,000 liters of chemicals used to cook it, along with fifty kilos of cocaine marked with a Superman logo, a signature linked to the cartel responsible for the drug’s branding and origin.
: Attribution: Information compiled by investigative reporters and police sources in OPEN CASE, with ongoing updates reflected in court records and public statements. [Source: Prensa Ibérica investigative desk]