In the dead of the night, wearing bullet-proof vests, their faces masked, scores of armed Spanish police staged a stealthy pre-dawn raid on homes in a small Catalan town this week.
Despite being armed to the teeth, this wasn’t an anti-terror operation: they were raiding marijuana plantations — which are increasingly run by gangs with serious weaponry.
With its eight million residents, this wealthy northeastern region of Spain has in recent years morphed from being a transit route for drugs to becoming a notorious European production hub, mainly of marijuana.
And as a result, guns are becoming increasingly visible and instances of armed violence are on the rise.
In their pre-dawn raid in Constanti, which lies 100 kilometres (60 miles) down the coast from Barcelona, police burst into seven homes that had been taken over by squatters.
Inside, they found 2,000 marijuana plants growing under powerful lights in rooms equipped with large fans.
“We’re fighting to stop this whole area from turning into a mini narco-state,” said Tarragona police chief Inspector Ramon Franques, referring to police efforts across the region.
Regional police say there has been a worrying rise in gun violence brought on by the growing presence of drug gangs.
“The trafficking and cultivation of marijuana is worrying, but mostly because of the associated increase in violence,” explained Carlos Otamendi, head of criminal investigations at the Mossos d’Esquadra regional police.
On June 23, gun violence exploded into the public eye when a man pulled out a weapon, allegedly a Kalashnikov, and shot dead two people during an argument on the outskirts of the northern city of Girona.
Initial indications suggest the argument was not drug-related but the alleged perpetrator — who is still at large — belonged to a gang involved in marijuana trafficking.
In a separate incident around the same time, police seized five weapons, two of them military-grade, while breaking up a group that had smuggled hashish into the region by boat, an increasingly common practice.
Read more. https://www.barrons.com/news/guns-n-ganja-weapons-flood-catalonia-s-cannabis-trade-15ff82d0
