Antonio Pampliega, one of the Spanish journalists kidnapped for 10 months in Aleppo (Syria) between 2015 and 2016 and struggling in international conflicts, was unaware of the violence that is taking place on the Costa del Sol, a few kilometers from his Parental home away in Antequera (Málaga). When he received the proposal to lead the investigative podcast Costa Nostra, inspired by the book by Antonio Romero Ruiz and Miguel Díaz Becerra, he entered a reality hidden behind the splendor of luxury tourism.
In each of the 10 episodes of this original Amazon Music production of La Maldita, voted last week as one of the most interesting podcasts of 2022 by several experts consulted by this newspaper, listeners can discover the stories and workings of more than 100 mafia discover companies of 59 nationalities based in the region. In this Tower of Babel of organized crime, drug traffickers are increasingly sharing resources and operations in a location Europol ranks as one of the most violent areas in Europe, with numerous murders being counted between 2018 and 2021.
Pampliega (Madrid, 40 years old) and his team investigate the personal testimonies of the drug dealers and their lawyers; by police officers, by drug boat pilots and also by journalists who witnessed how criminals lived decades ago, in the Marbella of the jet set, with princes and movie stars. What his research discovers is, as Pampliega himself described in a telephone conversation in mid-December, “a surreal realism reminiscent of Federico Fellini and Paolo Sorrentino”.
Journalist Antonio Pampliega takes on the investigative “podcast” “Costa Nostra” La Maldita
The book the podcast is based on went on sale in 2009, so it’s only used as an excuse to start new research directions. “I like working with documentation. I read Antonio and Miguel’s book. I studied it thoroughly, I added more documentation… It surprised me because Galicia is always in the conversation when we deal with the drug problem. I had no idea what was happening in my backyard. And it’s scary,” explains the journalist, who wanted to flee what he calls “the desktop ‘true crime’”.
One of the things Pampliega asked for was to work in the field. “I wanted to do and conduct the interviews myself. it is what i do I didn’t want to limit myself to reading a study about what someone else was doing,” he says. After months of work, he obtained testimonies from some Costa del Sol criminals and the agents who are pursuing them. “Except for some special cases, the National Police, Civil Guard and Customs Service were always available. They were so upset there wasn’t time to show all the footage we got,” he admits. Access to criminals was another matter entirely. “It took us a long time to convince them. Both one and the other, especially the criminals, accepted mainly because their faces do not come out. You feel less exposed to audio. Most likely, if Costa Nostra had been an audiovisual production, we could not have had these testimonies,” comments Pampliega, who had the support of a fixer, a person familiar with the environment to be studied, who mediates between the journalist and his interlocutors.
Ricardo Álvarez-Ossorio, lawyer for some drug dealers on the Costa del Sol, is one of the interviewees in ‘Costa Nostra’ Fernando Moleres
a different context
After encounters with drug dealers in countries like Colombia and Mexico, the man from Madrid tells of a criminal context very different from that in Spain. For Costa Nostra, he and his team met with one of them at a restaurant on the Costa del Sol: “I noticed if he had a ‘pipa’ and he didn’t. I was surprised that when he sat down, his back was to the door. Elsewhere, criminals have to tread carefully, knowing other drug dealers can kill them in the middle of the street. But in this part of Spain, despite everything that’s happening, it’s harder for something like that to happen. No bodies appear on the bridges,” he explains.
Costa Nostra also has time to explore minor characters in this criminal coven. One of them is Ricardo Álvarez-Ossorio, a renowned criminal defense attorney nicknamed “the devil’s advocate” by some media outlets. At the same time, he represents clients such as the Vatican, large Spanish companies and powerful drug dealers such as Mohamed Taieb Ahmed aka El Nene. “We didn’t just want to focus on what narco and drugs are, but also show other types of people who are affected by this environment. He tells us, without hiding himself, with his first and last name, his work in defense of these people. Thanks to testimonials like his, the listener understands that ‘Costa Nostra’ is a very real story,” defends Pampliega.
Many of the stories of these criminals are those of former children with no future from southern Spain and northern Spain. In the port of Algeciras, the reporter discovers what the drug traffickers’ boats look like and meets the head of customs surveillance and two of his opponents. One of them is Manuel, who can unload bales in 90 seconds. “He started out in Tangiers as a kid selling second-hand clothes and became one of the big drug dealers sending hashish to Europe. He explained his life to us with a 50,000 euro watch,” says Pampliega. The other is David, a narco-boat pilot who is used to risking his life dodging patrol cars at more than 100 km/h: “He’s spent a few years in prison but he doesn’t care, it’s paying set out to earn thousands of euros per trip”.
According to the researcher, there is enough material for more seasons of Costa Nostra. “We left everything that happened with cocaine because of time constraints. After Antwerp, Algeciras is the second busiest port in Europe with traffic of this drug. On the Costa del Sol, cocaine kills, which is not usually the case with hashish. I would like to dig there and see how far it will take us, whether to Mexico, Panama, Colombia…”, the journalist admits.
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