The SOS of drug traffickers in the Strait of Gibraltar

• Immigration The toll of the southern boat routes: one death every day during 2021

• Drugs The fight against drug trafficking advances with more judicial investigations into police corruption and money laundering

It is dark night and the waters of the Strait of Gibraltar, off the coast of Algeciras, are a black blanket over which, minutes before, a huge boat with four outboard motors had almost flown. But that was before the

ran out due to the lack of foresight of its crew, an unwanted encounter that forced the route to be altered or because those who had to guarantee refueling did not appear. The engines are off and on the boat, several men are waiting to be rescued. They are standing next to a mountain of brown burlap bales that are slowly being tossed overboard as a Sea Rescue ship draws closer in response to their call for help.

The scene has been repeated off the

for years, but this December it has multiplied and a good part of the outings carried out in the last month by the rescue teams of the public company - dependent on the Ministry Transport - have been motivated by the SOS of the drug traffickers.

Among the Maritime Rescue troops stationed in the area, the increase in rescues from traffickers' boats has not gone unnoticed, most of the time with drugs included.

One of them confirms to EL MUNDO how since the beginning of

and until the end of the year, the exits of this type in which he has participated directly have reached six.

The usual thing, he adds, is that, at most, they are half, two or three.

The scene that is narrated in the first lines corresponds to one of those rescues, which ended, as almost all end, in the port, to which a rescue boat took the rescued and where Civil Guard agents were waiting for them. But there was

, with the packages missing and the alleged drug traffickers assuring that they had drifted while "fishing."

In that case it was the fuel that ran out, but, according to the sources consulted, the reasons why they remain at the mercy of the currents and are forced to ask for help are very varied. There are narcolanchas that suffer

and that are unable to continue sailing with their heavy load, there are those that present a leak that endangers not only the merchandise reaching its destination, but also those who transport and guard it and there are who suffer an accident and get shipwrecked.

"They are

," explains a professional who has saved more than one drug trafficker lost in the middle of the Strait, "and that's how we treat it," he adds.

In fact, he says that even, despite the fact that the indications are overwhelming, they do not even know for sure that what they transport -and throw away before being rescued- is hashish.

Salvamento Marítimo has

in matters of security and, much less, with regard to the fight against the trafficking of narcotic substances.

Their teams limit themselves to going where they are required, where the SOS is launched, and to ensure that the crew members of the damaged vessels reach land safe and sound.

And that's it.

So much so that it is impossible to know with certainty how many of the rescues that are carried out in the Strait of Gibraltar -or in any other point of the extensive Spanish coastline- have drug traffickers as protagonists.

Simply because the

do not discriminate, because Salvamento Marítimo cannot verify when there are drugs (or not) on the boats it helps.

Officially, then, there are no rescues of drug traffickers, although there are, as some workers of the public company assure, always under the condition of anonymity because, they say, whoever speaks otherwise exposes himself to some reprisal.

From the union section of Maritime Rescue of the CGT not only ratify the story of these public employees, but also complain that they are not the ones who should go to these rescues. Above all because it represents an added

for the workers, but also because the Civil Guard could do it, which does have the power to inspect the drug loads that the boats transport from neighboring Morocco, as well as to interrogate and even arrest the crew members if suspicions that they are drug traffickers are confirmed.

Ismael Furió, union delegate of the CGT in Maritime Rescue, recalls that the armed institute has been coordinating all emergencies for some time and that before going to a rescue there is already

-provided by air or by other ships that give the warning- that allow us to intuit whether or not they are drug ships.

In other words, it is possible to know if there may be drugs on board and, therefore, send the Civil Guard to the rescue/intervention.

Furió points out that, although it is a situation that occurs throughout the Spanish coast, it is especially concentrated in the

because it is one of the main

through which drugs enter the Iberian Peninsula from North Africa.

The other castaways, the immigrants

In any case, the main activity of the boats and helicopters and of the Maritime Rescue personnel continues to be the rescue of immigrants who embark on small boats to try to bridge the distance that separates the Moroccan or Algerian coasts from Spain.

According to official statistics from the Ministry of the Interior, throughout 2021 almost 17,000 immigrants have reached the Iberian Peninsula by

, most of them to the Andalusian coast.

This figure represents an increase of 2.6% compared to 2020, when 16,560 immigrant entries were recorded.

These almost 17,000 foreigners arrived on the coast of southern Spain on board, according to official statistics,

of all kinds, 13.4% more than those detected in 2020.

The southern routes concentrate approximately

of all irregular immigration destined for Spain.

In the twelve months of last year, Interior has registered 39,835 arrivals of irregular immigrants by sea, practically the same figure as in 2020, and six out of ten of them arrived on the Canary coast.

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