Two investigations against drug trafficking have shown, once again, Barcelona's prominence as one of the entry points for cocaine into Europe, but also how drug traffickers attempt to infiltrate airport structures and bribe workers to assist them in transporting the drugs.

The Mossos d'Esquadra are investigating the discovery of a body floating in the La Baells reservoir, in the Berguedà region. This Wednesday morning, a witness thought they saw a wrapped body floating in the water and called the emergency number 112. The Catalan police went to the reservoir and confirmed it was a lifeless body, as reported by Regió 7 and confirmed by ARA.

The contact is quick and you have to be attentive not to miss anything. One guy approaches another and they exchange a few words. Sitting on a terrace to disguise himself and at a prudent distance, it's impossible to know what they're saying, but it can be interpreted. One gives some coins to the other. At that moment, the seller takes something out of his pocket and hands over, one by one, small things, as if they were coins, to the buyer's hands. The customer has already paid and after this exchange they separate with the satisfaction of having done it quickly, without anyone having seen them. But some plainclothes police officers appear and arrest them. The buyer is carrying several Lyrica pills in his pocket. The seller ends up arrested for a crime against public health.

The objective was to kill him. Three people walked up to a man who was on a terrace with his wife and his son, who was resting in a stroller. Suddenly, they opened fire with a pistol. Neighbors heard five shots. One of the bullets hit him in the neck. A ricocheting bullet grazed a pedestrian passing on the other side of the street, although it did not cause serious injuries. The woman and the child were unharmed. Afterward, when the target of the attack was already lying on the ground, badly wounded, they also attacked him with a bladed weapon. Once they finished the attempted execution, they fled, also on foot, in the direction of the sea.

They had 2,400 followers on Instagram, from where they offered for the same price a shot of botox and another of hyaluronic acid in the lips so that they would look plumper. The account published offers and saving bundles, and there were plenty of responses and comments from clients apparently satisfied with the aesthetic treatments received. But it was all a deception. The clinic was not a usual premises, but an apartment, and it was not advertised on the street as a medical center. Inside, hanging on the walls, were several diplomas, all fake. The botox they injected had no medical guarantee, and the person administering it had no medical training.

It was four in the afternoon when a man, his wife, and their son were sitting on the terrace of a bar in the Sant Martí district of Barcelona. The sun was shining, and they were not alone on the terrace. The son was resting in a stroller next to the table. Suddenly, some people appeared and shot the man indiscriminately. A witness heard five shots from his house. "At first, I thought they were firecrackers," he explains. Later, however, he poked his head out of the balcony and saw a man lying on the ground, covered in blood.

Watches are often a top target for thieves, especially specialized pickpockets who can tell an original Rolex from a fake just by looking at it. In fact, watches are the fifth most stolen item in Barcelona. Robberies with violence and intimidation of these accessories –usually because a tug on the strap is already considered violence– represent 8.8% of the total registered in the city. Last year, there were more than a thousand in the Catalan capital, almost three every day. A recent robbery perfectly demonstrates the modus operandi used by thieves.

The Bon Pastor neighborhood of Barcelona is still in shock over a crime that shook the community five days ago. En Pepe, a man with mobility and respiratory problems, allegedly stabbed a young man who had stolen a chain from him, and the thief ended up dying. The man has already been taken into provisional prison, a judicial decision that has outraged part of the neighborhood, which justifies it as self-defense and denounces that En Pepe is in a delicate state of health.

Its symbol is that of a lion. They were born in the 90s on the streets of Glasgow. First, they engaged in petty crime, local delinquency, but they entered the world of drug trafficking and evolved. So much so that they left Scotland and became a transnational drug cartel, with branches in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. They call themselves the Lyons and a Guardia Civil operation has decapitated their presence in Catalonia, Spain, and the world.

Heavy rains, strong winds, problems on Rodalies... The start of the year for Imma Solé as deputy director of Civil Protection has been intense. She speaks to ARA from the Emergency Centre of Catalonia (CECAT), in the Ministry of Interior, a space where she has spent hours and hours locked away managing emergencies.

The Civil Guard has fewer and fewer hypotheses on the table to try to find out why two trains collided in Adamuz, in the province of Córdoba, on January 18, an event that caused 46 fatalities. In fact, the Spanish police are now practically only investigating one of the hypotheses: a track breakage would have caused a derailment of an Iryo train traveling towards Madrid, which collided with an Alvia train that was moving in the opposite direction at that time.

The Mossos d'Esquadra arrested a man in his 60s this Sunday midday for killing another in the Bon Pastor neighborhood of Barcelona. The victim, a young man, died from a stab wound to the chest. The incident took place on the street in broad daylight, but it was not part of a fight, but rather a robbery in which the victim was, allegedly, the perpetrator of the stabbing.

The Mossos d'Esquadra arrested a man around 60 years old this Sunday at noon for killing another in the Bon Pastor neighborhood of Barcelona. The victim, a young boy, died from a stab wound to the chest. The events took place on the street in broad daylight, but they are not framed within a fight, but rather a robbery in which the victim was, presumably, the perpetrator of the stabbing.

Every year, more than 3 million containers pass through the port of Algeciras. Hundreds of thousands of trucks also pass through. The person in charge of controlling all this material is Lisardo Capote, head of the Customs Surveillance Service (SVA) in the Campo de Gibraltar. He leads the fight against drug trafficking and money laundering in southern Spain: the African coast is only 14 kilometers from the Iberian Peninsula. How is the drug trafficking issue right now?

The violent waves crash against the jetty. It is pitch black. A rainy and cold winter night. At Chechu's Bar, at the entrance to the port of Barbate, young and old alike defy the storm, smoking and finishing their beer. Most no longer live off the sea, but the sea calls to them. A Civil Guard car drives slowly past the bar. Looks of distrust from one and the other. A few hours later, at dawn, the police will return to the port area. A narcolancha has taken refuge there for a while to avoid the furious thrashing of the water. The traffickers' gomones seek refuge in the ports of the area while they wait for their moment.

The old pier on the Barbate River is a graveyard of timbers weathered by time. The barges sunk beneath the greenish water contrast with the white facades of the houses, demanding a coat of paint. The asphalt is full of ruts and cracks. In Barbate, there is no public transport. The theatre is in ruins. The parks, abandoned. The sports facilities flood when it rains. "We have an endemic lag of 15 or 20 years," admits the mayor of the municipality, Miguel Molina.

Driving through it, from the access roads to the main avenues, Marbella has the quality of being a city that could be many other cities. Better said, any other overcrowded city on the Costa Dorada, Costa Brava, French Riviera, or the Costa del Sol itself, of which it is an emblem. The tallest buildings are hotels and not offices, the apartment blocks, also imposing, have communal swimming pools, and the mountains on the horizon are full of white dots; buildings that have destroyed the natural landscape. But if you venture onto the roads that wind through the mountains, you see they are not chalets or old houses: there are many mansions, complexes, tennis clubs, and exclusive golf courses. The health crossing signs are accompanied by signs that say Arzt and Apotheke, not doctor or pharmacy. The billboards are in English and advertise private clinics, mostly for aesthetic tweaks, to treat low fertility or hair loss, aimed at an older demographic who do not want to - or at least want to hide - getting older.

"Tell whoever sent you that next time I will cut his throat." The "next time" the three hitmen lodged about fifty bullets into Catherine Isabelle Castagna and her husband, Jacques René Grangeon. The Lyon clan did not like Castagna's threat and they gunned down the couple in their luxurious villa in the Las Lomas de Marbella urbanization. 50 bullets for the 500 million pesetas that Castagna and Grangeon owed them for losing a hashish game. One bullet for every 10 million (60,000 euros). The Lyonnais clan had recently settled a few months ago on the Costa del Sol to control the route between Morocco and France and they were not messing around. It was the autumn of 1996.

A bright orange Lamborghini speeds up. It's dazzling and makes a deafening noise. It parks in front of you and a young guy gets out, with a slicked-back blonde quiff and well-worked biceps, wearing a Gucci polo shirt worth over 1,000 euros, an appearance he completes with a gold ring and a Rolex watch. You've been following him on social media for a while and admire the money he makes and how he spends it. The cars, the houses, the outfits, the jewelry. You envy his trips around the world. Colombia, Costa Rica, the United Arab Emirates, Japan. You've been taking his advice on investing, on being a winner, for a long time. What is success if it's not what he does? You even set aside some of the little money you have to enjoy the privilege of having him all to yourself for a few hours, so he can explain how he's done it. He gets out of the car and calls you 'crack'. And, automatically, you feel like a crack. He fascinates you. He abducts you. He captivates you. He makes you fall in love.

The Catalan police (Mossos d'Esquadra) and the National Police launched an operation Monday morning against a drug trafficking ring based in Catalonia. Following an investigation coordinated by Europol, the police are seeking to dismantle a Turkish gang involved in trafficking marijuana and cocaine, but which also trafficked in weapons, according to sources consulted by ARA. The police have made 19 arrests, 14 of them in Catalonia. The investigation began a year ago, and the operation is now in full swing. Arrests have been made in Barcelona, ​​Teià, Sabadell, Tordera, and Lloret de Mar. In addition, two people have been arrested in Málaga, and six others are under investigation in Greece. Specifically, the accused are allegedly responsible for receiving the drugs in Catalonia—they did not produce them—and distributing them to other parts of Europe, where they fetch much higher prices. One of the police raids was at a bar in Poble Sec. In total, more than 200 officers are involved.