A man poses on dozens of hashish bales aboard a drug boat. Four semi-rigid boats stacked together in the sea, the one in the middle full of diesel bottles. Another rubber plows through the water as four crew members sort out more bales, while a pounding lyric plays in the background: “A kiss, for those still in prison.” These are some of the dozens of videos showcasing drugs and on TikTok, the new favorite network of Strait dealers who proudly display their hash stash. After spending three years inconspicuous due to the police siege, there are agents who are worried about returning to their old habits, just in a few days in which the Guadalquivir and its surroundings have made it clear that this drug is still very popular is present in the area.
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“You can't see the big ones, but the lieutenants, the ones below, are the ones who show off even more. They were quiet for a while, but the resurgence is like daisies,” summarizes a civic activist from La Línea de la Concepción (Cádiz). The agent draws a parallel between what he sees again on the streets of his city and what's happening on TikTok, full of videos bragging about drug stash houses and drug boat movements. Just search for the words “rubber” and “stretch” to find these shots, most of which were uploaded in the last few months by anonymous accounts or with presumably fake names.
In the footage, masked crew members can be seen sailing through the sea with hashish or gasoline bottles and using tricks typical of drug traffickers in the area, such as tying down engine covers with straps to prevent them from jumping at high speeds. Most of the accounts uploading this content are known to the agents, as up to two investigators from the Civil Guard and the National Police confirmed, without providing further details. Most of the videos were probably not recorded by them, as a source close to the drug world emphasizes. But the mere spread bothers those who have spent years trying to end the sense of impunity that has taken root among hashish traffickers in the Strait. “There is a feeling of impunity and you say: 'Aren't these people going to be arrested?'” an armed institute staff member asks angrily.
“These are aspiring drug traffickers. “Those who have experience in this matter are not the ones who do such things,” admits a source close to the traffickers. You agree with the other side. “Those who fool around on social networks are short, fat people don't play with these things. “They are small-time narcos,” explains a National Police investigator in Cadiz sarcastically. Despite the social concern that these types of publications generate, it is not these videos that most worry or bring the agents into focus, but rather focus on searching the Internet for the traces that the bosses or people close to them leave behind about their lives. And this is not so easy, after the names of Hashish were chastised by their arrogance and they themselves gave their own order not to exaggerate on networks like Facebook or Instagram.
The reggaeton of Isco Tejón, one of the two Castaña brothers, known as the kings of hashish, inaugurated this ban on the networks in the Candela video clip in October 2018. His outstanding appearance amidst half-naked girls and bottles of champagne unsettled the security forces, who were by then already immersed in the special security plan for Campo de Gibraltar, introduced in the summer of that year. Back then, it was common for drug traffickers and their henchmen to boast on their social networks, using first and last names and open profiles, that they were dedicated to the hashish trade and the luxuries it offered them. But such was their audacity that they even suffered the inner betrayal of one of their friends, who created an anonymous profile on Instagram and broadcast love threesomes, cuckolding and parties. A reaction that lasted hours and, above all, injured the accused drug traffickers.
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After that, and after the thousands of arrests as a result of the police siege, traffickers learned and abandoned their hubris, both online and in real life, where they stopped driving around in luxury cars. More than three years passed in this silence before they dared to show off again. Police are linking the profiles disseminating these hidden videos to the reopening of many previously sealed gyms that were implicated in drug trafficking money laundering investigations. “You can see that they have returned to their old habits: you can see them coming in and out like before. They, with the Land Rovers, have a lot of gym,” explains the agent.
More movement in the Guadalquivir
“Drug trafficking has never stopped, whether we discover it more or less is another matter. It seems like there is more ostentation again, but the principle of authority has been restored and I think it has not been lost,” says a police officer in the area. His colleague from the National Police of Cadiz believes that there have been no major changes for now and associates exuberance with seasons like summer, “when they party all day long”. But the TikTok videos join other indicators that suggest business is picking up again after a period of apparent calm in areas like Guadalquivir and its surrounding areas. On the 17th, civil guards on a patrol boat observed up to four empty drug boats passing them in the river at high speed and entering the sea. That same night, another patrol boat arrested the four occupants of a drug boat loaded with gasoline bottles – one of them with a military ID from Ceuta.
Early on Thursday morning, the chase between an overweight van with its lights off and the police in the Sanlúcar area ended with the seizure of 111 bales and an AK-47 rifle that they had previously used without hesitation against the agents. Operation Luster Paniagua, carried out by the police and the tax office between October and today, also ended with the seizure of three submachine guns, additional drugs (four tons) and, in this case, nine prisoners. The question now is whether the drug traffickers will return to their lawless ways, spurred on by the end of some court cases from which they are not yet entirely clear, and by the end of OCON, the organ of the Civil Guard that fought against drug trafficking until last year have.
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