Roberto Saviano had already written that Spain was the garden of the Italian mafias. Since the end of the Seventies, the Camorra and ‘ndrangheta have exported their trafficking to the southern regions of the Iberian peninsula: Catalonia, the Valencian Community and, above all, Andalusia, Murcia and Malaga. The Catalan journalist Enric Queralt, Spain’s leading scholar of the phenomenon, reiterated this to me in an interview. However, our export crime is not the only one: it might seem incredible, there is also the Scandinavian mafia which in Andalusia has long been managing a lucrative multi-million euro drug trafficking ring, so the region of the sun, the sea with chiringuitos and tourism has also become the first sorting center for narcotic substances destined for Northern Europe, where a kilo of Marijuana is resold six times a lot. As the Camorra and ‘ndrngheta have done for over forty years, the Swedish mafia launders its huge profits by building resorts, buying restaurants and nightclubs on the Costa del Sol. Almost completely undisturbed, considering that, despite the efforts of the Spanish police, there is no specific anti-mafia structure, as in Italy.
Therefore, there are mafias capable of extending their tentacles abroad and there are also countries, in theory virtuous, capable of developing their own organized crime which they then export like the most powerful and well-known organizations, such as the South American and Italian ones.
In Malaga as in Naples or Palermo, murders, score settling, trafficking and gang fights, but this time there is also the signature of the Scandinavians. In Marbella a drug trafficker was murdered after a religious function, as he was leaving the church, some shops were blown up for not having paid protection money, killers shot at the first light of dawn, then disappeared on a bike. There are so many Swedish Gomorrah stories that I’m thinking of a screenplay for a sure-to-be-successful series. In recent years, numerous criminal gangs from Scandinavia have chosen the sun of Marbella, bringing with them a particular brutality and ability to insinuate themselves into every economic-social fabric, taking root in fertile soil.
And even on their own terms, the situation is no better: studies by Malmö University confirm that Sweden is going through a real social crisis due to organized crime. The figures speak for themselves: 200 victims of firefights in 5 years and in the last year alone around 50 murders, almost all linked to drug trafficking. Marbella is the ideal place: huge quantities of drugs from North Africa and Türkiye are loaded onto the coasts every night. Business is excellent: a kilo of marijuana in Andalusia costs 1500 euros and brings in 10,000 euros in Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland. Then there is the ease of cleaning up illicit profits by investing them in tourism and real estate businesses with a low level of controls on the origin of the large sums of money.
The deployment of the police force in Spain is large, but as mentioned, there is a lack of a specialized team and, very often, it was our DEA agents who were called to teach their Iberian colleagues. However, if the drug trafficking numbers are not reversed, then the fairytale of the Costa del Sol could soon end.