Criminal organizations involved in international cocaine trafficking are exploring every possible means of operation. In Galicia, the most common are fishing boats, merchant ships or tugboats that deliver the drugs to speedboats. However, there has been an increase in the number of seizures in sea containers arriving from South America recently. Of all, the most important was one carrying 7,500 kilograms hidden in the center of the back of frozen tuna, which arrived at the end of 2024, entering through the port of Vigo and was seized in a warehouse in Cambre, in A Coruña.
The port of the olive-growing city was the scene of many seizures, some of which were seized and others were successful for drug traffickers. Among the first to stand out was one weighing 500 kilograms, managed by a company based in Valencia and controlled by an Albanian citizen.
Last week, the Balkan man, the Valencian man and two other people were arrested in flagrante delicto after coordinating another drug shipment, this time through the port of the capital of Turia. This dismantled the criminal network that used both ports to smuggle cocaine into Europe, drugs that, in all likelihood, ended up in the hands of the organization represented by the Albanian citizen, who is now in prison.
The operation in the main port of the North-West of the Peninsula was not at all easy. The forces of the Anti-Organized Crime and Anti-Drug Team (EDOA) of the Guardia Civil Command in Pontevedra carried out the seizure in collaboration with the National Police and the Customs Surveillance Service. They suspected that the container was transporting drugs, but it was not visible. It was not inside with the cargo — the so-called “gancho ciego” — nor in the spaces of the cooling systems, an increasingly common modus operandi recently.
To find the drugs, agents had to literally lift the metal structure of the container's floor. It was there, perfectly placed and hidden, that the packages, weighing a total of half a ton, were found.
Over 2,000 kilograms of cocaine in the port of Valencia
In November 2025, as part of investigations and ongoing controls on fruit imports from South America, authorities carried out a search of several containers at the port of Valencia. All were linked to the same organization that had sent the cargo to Vigo, which raised the alarm.
In one of them, 2,005 kilograms of cocaine were found, distributed in 2,000 packages, inside boxes of fruit coming from Ecuador. Under bananas. A classic method.
This proved that drug traffickers had the ability to disguise cocaine using various methods, all with the aim of evading authorities. This time they failed.
