The Aragua Train was meant to connect Aragua with Carabobo, both Venezuelan states. The project began in 2005, and a workers' union took complete control of job allocation. They soon became corrupt and began extorting contractors. As police sources often say, the world of crime offers easy money and is difficult to escape. When construction of these railway lines was halted in 2011, the union was already considered a criminal gang: the Aragua Train. This was the criminal seed of a group that consolidated itself a little over a decade ago in Tocorón prison, in eastern Aragua, extorting inmates and controlling the flow of drugs into the penitentiary. And a leader rose to power: Héctor Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, known as the Warrior ChildHe was imprisoned in 2013 and forged ties with the internal union leaders. The group grew in number, sporting tattoos of locomotives and messages like "son of God" all over their bodies. They committed murders, kidnappings, and attacks, and played a very active role in human and drug trafficking to the United States. The cartel expanded through Venezuela, Chile, Colombia, and Peru, eventually reaching the US. And now, it was attempting to establish itself in Spain.

In Ignasi Aragay

The Civil Guard has arrested 31 people, with no criminal record or apparent relationship between them, accused of checking in 866 kilos of marijuana on flights from Thailand to El Prat airport (Baix Llobregat), in what amounts to a new international route of this substance.

It's hard to say it like this: Barcelona, ​​​​a cocaine addict. It may sound exaggerated. But no: it reflects a reality that is both proclaimed and very worrying. It falls short; with its port also serving as a gateway, like Europe as a whole, we are at the root of the problem. A global problem.

This week we want to focus on one fact: drugs can be found in every corner of Catalonia. In this Sunday's dossier, we'll focus on what's happening on the streets, where the way they're sold is changing, but we'll also look back to discover how Catalonia has become a drug hub. In fifteen years, seizures in Catalonia have doubled. So have arrests, closely linked to foreign criminal groups that are replacing local ones. These groups are taking increasingly greater precautions.

The drug has many names. On the street, "chabú" and "tina" are methamphetamines. The first name was given to Asians, and the second is more commonly used by Americans. However, it comes more from North Africa. It's a mixture of drugs with hashish and cola, a combination on the rise. Caffeine, ketamine, and pink food coloring. And nothing is difficult to find. It's not easy to shake hands, hiding the exchange from a snitch. Police pressure on the street, especially by plainclothes officers, has led to more and more exchanges taking place from a distance. Russia. The dealers attach a small magnet, difficult to see with the naked eye, to blinds, trash cans, and other metal objects; and it's all done with bitcoins. Shortly afterward, the customer receives a location, accompanied by a photograph with an arrow indicating the exact location of the drug.

Cacon and Mayol were the nicknames used by the two brothers who led a gang of Dominican drug traffickers operating in the Barcelona metropolitan area. The police have never found Mayol but they have located and arrested Cacon, who will sit in the dock at the Audiencia de Barcelona with three other men: two members of his group, Nono and Argenis, and one from the rival gang, Andrés. According to the prosecution, the brothers' organisation devised a plan to "reassert and protect" its power and exact revenge against the opposing group. This Dominican metropolitan narco war left six murders between 2016 and 2017. Now half of them are being tried.

The name Jonas Falk probably goes unnoticed in Catalonia but he is well known in Sweden, where he is said to be the country's most famous criminal. Falk, who has been nicknamed 'the Swedish Pablo Escobar', was acquitted by the Swedish courts but has been found guilty in Barcelona: he has been sentenced to two and a half years in prison for laundering millions of euros that came from drug trafficking, despite the fact that the prosecution was seeking 20 years in prison. He was handed the longest sentence in the month-long trial against him and eleven other defendants, four of whom were acquitted. He "created a structure of natural and legal persons at the international level" to make investments, at least in Spain, to hide the money obtained from drug trafficking, says the ruling, which ARA has had access to.