Chema Rodríguez Barbate (Cádiz)
Barbate (Cadiz)
Updated Sunday, February 11, 2024-02:53
Cádiz Eight arrested for the death of two agents in Barbate, including the pilot of the drug boat
Barbate Security explodes against drug trafficking... and against Marlaska: "It is time for us to be heard"
It rains at times and in the fishing port of Barbate there is a
disturbing silence
. Calm reigns, but a tense calm. Just a few hours have passed since a small Civil Guard boat, with six agents on board, was run over by a powerful drug boat, leaving two dead and a third seriously injured. In daylight you can barely recognize the scene of the brutal attack cheered on (and recorded) by a few that have outraged and embarrassed many in this small fishing town.
But this indignation is expressed in a low voice and some remain silent, directly, when the journalist asks about what happened right here, just twelve hours ago. Those who speak do
so safe from discreet glances
and under request for anonymity. Like Juan (the name is fictitious), a master netter who has been witnessing what enters and leaves these docks for more than 50 years. "Everyone here knows me, if my name comes out they can come and do harm," he says. And he points to some of those forming a huddle in the nearby bar.
"There have always been drugs here," he explains, "but what happened tonight had never happened before." It refers, of course, to the murder of David Pérez and Miguel Ángel González, 43 and 39 years old, who died
instantly
after the rubber of the drug traffickers who had taken refuge at the mouth of the port in the face of the intense storm hit them, literally. , above.
In recent months, he says, he has noticed
greater activity from drug traffickers
in the area and in the port. But the usual thing, he adds, is that they stay at a distance and only enter, as happened on Friday night, when the wind and rain hit too much and navigation became too dangerous.
Mouth of the port of Barbate, where the attack on the civil guards occurred.EFE
Juan's stomach turns when he talks about what happened just a few meters from his net room. For the tragic death of the two agents and, he emphasizes, for those who recorded and
cheered the drug traffickers
from the docks. "If any of them had been my son, may God take him," he proclaims indignantly. On top of that, he adds, "we can't even speak freely."
A municipal source recounts how the agents were attacked, how they tried to flee and returned when they realized that one of them had fallen into the water and how they arrived, with difficulty and with the boat badly damaged, to a newly opened pontoon in the port. And, meanwhile, the drug traffickers and their
hooligans
laughed.
What Juan points out, in a low voice and with the name changed, is shouted by the spokesperson for the Alternative Coordinator against drugs, Francisco, Paco, Mena, who points directly to the drug clans of Campo de Gibraltar and how they are expanding their radio of action and looking for
new routes and landing points
for their caches as the police pressure exerted within the framework of the Special Plan of the Ministry of the Interior becomes increasingly unbearable in La Línea de la Concepción or Algeciras, its natural ecosystem until recently. bit.
Mena warns that these drug traffickers "are beginning to contaminate other parts of the province" and Barbate is one of them. They look for
weak points
in security, less protected spaces, with few means to move through and Barbate, he insists, meets those requirements.
He sees "intolerable" the attitude of those who recorded and encouraged the attack, most likely young people connected to those drug mafias who have found in them the
labor
they need for minor tasks, such as unloading the bales or reporting fuel. .
Barbate has one of its weak points that is easy to exploit by trafficking mafias. The youth here suffers, especially harshly, the consequences of
rampant unemployment
that places the town at the top of the worst official statistics and which stood, in December of last year, at 27.65%. With these data, the breeding ground for the drug trafficker to spread his tentacles is more than ideal.
Juan defends that the fewest young people are willing to fall
into the arms of drug smugglers
and that Barbateño youth is focused on other things, training and working. He gives as an example his own children, all busy.
What he does agree with Paco Mena on is that the civil guards who took to the sea early Friday morning did so
without means
, in a "toy boat."
This criticism is heard everywhere in the streets of a Barbate that has woken up shocked by the murder of the two civil guards and that gathers en masse at noon at the doors of the City Hall, in front of its
flags at half mast
, to express their rejection of the violence of drug traffickers, their solidarity with the families of the victims and, also and energetically, to complain about the lack of resources of the security forces that fight an unequal struggle.
The mayor, Miguel Molina, the counselor of the Presidency, Antonio Sanz, and other authorities at the concentration.EFE
Among those shouting slogans in favor of the Civil Guard and against the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska - who has suspended his visit to the town at the last minute - are Antonio Hernández and his wife, Antonia Chirino. They both know what they're talking about. He, a retired civil guard, has served in Barbate for years and she, as an agent's wife, knows first-hand how
defenseless
they are against a much better prepared and, above all, better armed criminal.
That more and better means are needed is what they repeat, over and over again, at the City Council. Both its mayor, Miguel Molina, and its Councilor for Citizen Security, Francisco Ponce, and the deputy mayor, Ana Moreno. In recent times, there have been constant
letters addressed to the minister
to explain the painful situation of the Civil Guard and demand reinforcements and always, they regret, with the same result. "It's time for us to be heard," Ponce tells his neighbors.
If that does not happen, Mena warns, Barbate runs the risk of returning to the past, to the
dark years
of the 1980s, when the leader of the Antón trafficking clan walked through its streets with total impunity and with a lion as a pet.
Those times were, he says, a "nightmare" for Barbate that many in the town still remember. Times when traffickers were the
lords and masters
and heroin wreaked havoc on the fishing boat crews. To the point that the population said enough, like this Saturday, they took to the streets and forced the authorities to adopt urgent measures in the form of a special plan that returned normality to this coastal corner of Cádiz that has been left behind. tourism development of its neighbors.
For now, the Security Councilor emphasizes, a special uptick in drug trafficking has not been detected, but
the Campo de Gibraltar mafias
have set their sights on Barbate - 40 kilometers of barely patrolled beach and a massive strike that offers abundant labor. - it is a fact.
Barbate, the president of Alternatives insists, is a short distance from reliving that nightmare and "society cannot look the other way."