Campo - Spain’s anti-smuggling campaign enters ninth year, nearly 34,500 arrests made since 2018

The country’s sustained campaign against the illegal narcotics trade in the Campo de Gibraltar and further afield, now in its ninth year, has resulted in the arrest of 34,499 suspects and the seizures of 2,300 tonnes of drugs and 3,531 firearms. 

Last week Pedro Fernández, the national government’s delegate to Andalucía reviewed Spain’s special policing plan for the Campo de Gibraltar, launched in July 2018, before an audience composed of representatives from all the agencies involved in the nation’s strategy to combat drugs smuggling and its related crimes across its six southernmost provinces. 

Breaking down the campaign’s successes, he highlighted the large amounts of narcotics and dangerous weapons taken out of circulation, before explaining that the country was going to focus its efforts on international collaboration and the up-skilling of police officers as counters to the smugglers’ increasing access to skills, material resources and safe harbours. 

Increased international cooperation is vital “because of the international structure of these [narcotics smuggling] organisations”, Mr Fernández said, and because of the Iberian Peninsula’s geographical location as a gateway into Europe for illicit cargos. 

Doing so, he said, would allow Spain’s police forces to maintain the pressure that has seen many gangs leave their bases of operations in the Campo de Gibraltar and seek other smuggling routes on Spain’s coast. 

Mr Fernández also stressed how, between the programme’s launch and the end of its latest edition in 2027, 190 million euros will have been spent in increasing the personnel available to the Guardia Civil and Policía Nacional on the front lines, an increase in staffing levels of some 16%. 

Referring to the latest police reports, he announced that 140 tonnes of drugs (104 tonnes of which was cannabis resin) had been seized in the first eight months of 2026. 

Officers had also taken 834 tonnes of fuel destined for smugglers’ launches and 348 firearms, making more than 3,000 arrests on drugs charges via 1,893 separate police operations. 

Hashish remains the substance police officers discover most commonly, he said, but he went to explain that there was a growing trend of discoveries of cocaine. 

A shifting battleground 

Mr Fernández said that the sustained police pressure in the provinces covered by the special policing plan has resulted in a drop in the number of launches reported reaching Andalucía’s shores, but cautioned against optimism as the smugglers’ decision to pivot towards loading illicit cargos from large vessels onto speedboats and yachts at sea was allowing the gangs to disperse their activities over wider areas and also making them harder to intercept.  

The answer, he said, was an increase in international cooperation “to detect ships, vessels or semi-submersibles in international operations in the Atlantic Ocean”. 

Another arm of the police forces’ pressure on the smugglers has been the criminalisation of storing and transporting the fuel destined for the smugglers’ launches. 

Mr Fernández reported that one million litres of fuel had been seized in 2026 so far, “nearly more than the total for fuel seizures in 2025.” 

He concluded by highlighting other developments that, it is hoped, will shift the balance in the country’s favour. 

These include the legislation that criminalised ownership of the kind of launches favoured by the smugglers, and moves to crack down on the abstraction of electricity for the purposes of the cultivation of marijuana. 

On the other hand, Mr Fernández said, the gangs were becoming more “professional”, something Spain hopes it can counter by intensifying its efforts to combat money laundering and seize the assets the smugglers use to resupply their networks with launches and weapons. 

Spain’s Plan Especial de Seguridad para el Campo de Gibraltar has resulted in 49,775 police operations, 34,499 arrests, and the seizures of 2,300 tonnes of narcotics, 3,531 firearms and 2,398 launches to this day.