A container containing 140 kilos of cocaine betrays a stevedore at the port of Barcelona.

BarcelonaHe's a veteran stevedore at the Port of Barcelona. He didn't maintain a high standard of living, nor did he pretend to be better than he was. When he learned the delivery hadn't gone well, he decided to go into hiding. He did so in a hotel in the Sants neighborhood of Barcelona. The police entered his house and didn't find him. They did find an arsenal: two brass knuckles, a stun gun, a 12-gauge shotgun, a big-game rifle, a 9mm sporting handgun, a .22-caliber rifle, and an air pistol. They eventually located him the next day, walking down the street, and arrested him.

The story that ends with the arrest of a stevedore in the Sants neighborhood begins in Chile. At the end of June of that year, a ship left a port in that country. It made a stopover in Ecuador, and everything points to this being the moment of the contamination. This is what police slang means for placing a shipment of drugs in a shipping container. That container was destined for Barcelona, but it first made a logistical stop in Marseille.

French customs agents inspected 180 containers unloaded at their dock and ended up encountering what was coming from Chile. Inside, they found a surprise: 138 kilograms of cocaine. But they didn't seize it. "That speed was key," say sources involved in the operation. They requested a controlled delivery in Barcelona to not only seize the merchandise but also arrest those who were going to retrieve it. The measure was authorized by the relevant prosecutor's offices, and a joint team was formed with the Civil Guard and Customs Surveillance.

Controlled Delivery

The container arrived at the port on July 14 and was under constant surveillance. Three days later, the stevedore entered the scene: a group of people accessed the container, removed the drugs, and placed them in a second container. The motive? Containers coming from South America are usually more closely monitored, with the drugs placed in another, less suspicious container. The stevedore was key logistically to this, according to police sources. However, at this point, they hadn't seized the drugs. They waited longer, until the truck took the goods to their destination.

The drugs were tracked until they were unloaded at a warehouse in the Can Parellada industrial estate in Terrassa. There, a surveillance operation was set up to wait for the people inside to leave the warehouse, at which point two Spanish nationals were arrested. During the search of the warehouse, three vehicles (a truck, a van, and a car) were seized, as well as various materials used in indoor marijuana cultivation facilities, such as ventilation systems, lighting, and containers.

That same afternoon, searches were carried out at the homes of the two detainees and a third suspect, located in the towns of Sant Feliu de Llobregat, Corbera de Llobregat, and Vacarisses. Following investigations into access to the port of Barcelona, the truck driver who drove the truck to Terrassa and the stevedore who operated the crane used to move and handle the containers were identified. Consequently, both were arrested on July 24 and 26, respectively. All those arrested were brought before a court, and all were remanded in custody.