The port of Barcelona shields the accesses to know who introduces the cocaine

BarcelonaSometimes, ports are almost as large as the cities that give them their name. The one in Barcelona has a dimension of 11 km²; more than 1,500 football fields, or the equivalent of the Eixample and Ciutat Vella districts together. The immensity of these facilities and the water that bathes them are some of the main adversities for police forces in the fight against drug trafficking. But, due to their characteristics, they also have a small advantage that the authorities want to expand in the coming years: in any given city, anyone can enter and exit with total freedom, but at the port, only those people who are authorized to do so can.

The 2026 report from the State Attorney General's Office continues to point to the port of Barcelona as a “key and strategic” point for the entry of cocaine into Europe. The document focuses above all on stevedoring, the area where the arriving containers are unloaded and moved. They go so far as to speak of “the scandalous prominence and impunity of corrupt elements within stevedoring.” In these areas, it is stated in the report, there are failures in the computer control of the terminals and some containers that are stored there are lost from view.

But the public prosecutor's office also points to the exchange of cards and passwords between workers. And, as ARA has learned, this is one of the fronts that police authorities are now trying to attack. “People enter the port who should not enter, people who pose as stevedores,” state sources familiar with the Barcelona port. Currently, the access system to the facilities is electronic and is based on clock-in cards that are easily interchangeable. In addition, there have also been cases of theft or duplication of these credentials.

For this reason, work is underway at the port of Barcelona to implement biometric controls at access points to identify everyone entering and leaving the port through their physical traits. Right now, sources consulted by this newspaper state that the technological system already exists and can be used, but some aspects regarding data protection still need to be finalized. The forecast is that the first biometric controls could likely arrive next year.

Furthermore, the police working at the port also notice that containers are often moved and it is difficult to maintain traceability for each one and for which worker has handled it. Thus, an artificial intelligence (AI) system is being implemented to try to mitigate these security loopholes. The authorities are also considering other measures, such as the creation of a certificate of suitability for port employees as a prior filter to be able to work there, similar to the controls required at airports.

Possible change in trend

Several expert sources in the fight against drug trafficking are warning of a trend change in recent months. While ports still play a leading role, they believe that the security measures being implemented there and a trickle of arrests –"And not all of them are coming to light," warns a police source– are causing drug traffickers to seek other methods.

For example, in 2025, cocaine seizures at the port of Barcelona suffered a very notable decline: 6.847 tons were seized, a figure that represents 72.88% less than in 2024 and nearly a third of the 19.24 tons in 2023. Although finding less cocaine does not always mean that there is less of it, experts consider it a relevant indicator.

A source dedicated to fighting drug trafficking in the Spanish Levant points out that this decline has also been noted at the port of Valencia and attributes it to an operation carried out a year ago with 81 arrests. They state that the local structures that were in place have been worn down and drug traffickers are using other methods to bring in the drugs.

In fact, in the search for new methods, the sources consulted raise the possibility that drug traffickers are increasingly using submarines to transport drugs, a technique that, until now, was not very common in Spain. "In the ports, there is more fear of the police than a few years ago," state police sources, who add that lately more operational resources are also being allocated there, in addition to technological improvements.

Furthermore, the same sources explain that this trend is being repeated in large European ports. They consider that drug traffickers are using the blind hook technique less and less – placing cocaine hidden in a container at the point of origin – and that they are promoting unloading with narco-boats in the State, after the cocaine travels from South America to Africa on larger ships.

You don't have to go very far to see it: on Thursday, the dismantling of a group that was transporting cocaine from Andalusia to Europe, passing through Catalonia, was announced. This cocaine, up to 3,000 kilograms, was in bales that very likely—as the investigation points out, but it is not yet fully confirmed—had entered on drug boats.

This does not mean, however, that the problems at the ports are already resolved. The Public Prosecutor's Office continues to warn that drug cartels have managed to establish complex structures within the port network itself that have allowed them to introduce, in some cases, containers with hidden cocaine on a weekly basis.