Juan Franco asks his driver to slow down as the car swings on to what is reputed to be one of the most dangerous streets in Europe.
Halfway through lunchtime on a warm, grey afternoon, Calle Canarias is quiet. Apart from the binman sweeping up, there are few signs of life around the modest one- and two-storey houses.
“People expect there to be shootouts here,” says Franco, who has been the mayor of La Línea de la Concepción for almost three years. He gestures towards the fishermen’s homes, a shop, and a bar a little further up. “OK, so it’s not exactly Beverly Hills, but it’s not exactly Medellín, is it?”
Franco doesn’t care for the comparison to the Colombian city once held in thrall by Pablo Escobar, but it is one with which he is sadly familiar.
Over the past few years – and the past 12 months in particular – La Línea, which sprawls in the shadow of the Rock of Gibraltar, has acquired an unenviable reputation as Spain’s most troubled town.
The source of its infamy lies the other side of Calle Canarias, along the 7.5-mile (12km) stretch of beach from where, on a clear day, you can make out the Moroccan coast. Last year, police seized 145,372kg of hashish in the region and 11,785kg of cocaine.
Smuggling is hardly a recent phenomenon in this part of the world. But a surge in violence against police officers trying to combat the lucrative drug trade has established La Línea as the frontline of Spain’s battle against the traffickers.
Last April, 100 people threw stones at Civil Guards and national police officers as they tried to intercept a consignment of hashish on the beach at El Tonelero. Two months later, a local police officer, Víctor Sánchez, was run down and killed while chasing tobacco smugglers.
Things escalated further this February, when 20 masked men stormed La Línea’s hospital to free a suspected drug trafficker. Locals complain about a rapid loss of control and growing culture of impunity.
The town, which sprang up after the British took Gibraltar in the early 18th century, has long been on intimate terms with contraband. Once upon a time, it was tobacco, penicillin, nylon stockings, sugar and coffee. But in the 1980s and 90s, tobacco smuggling grew bigger thanks to much lower prices in Gibraltar than Spain and people brought it to the coast on launches.
When the Spanish authorities cracked down on the trade in the mid-90s, some of the smugglers diversified into Moroccan hashish. Their numbers swelled after the economic crisis hit Spain in 2008, forcing many of those who had lost their jobs in the construction sector to look for other ways to pay the bills.
Today, unemployment in the town stands at about 35%. But in the worst affected barrios, up to 80% of young people are out of work. The arithmetic, says Franco, is simple. “[People] have got little hope of finding work, which makes for ideal circumstances for the narcos.”
Approximately 3,000 of La Línea’s 64,000 inhabitants are thought to be involved in the 30 or so gangs that run the drug trade. Gang members are said to intermarry to consolidate power and to increase their reach and influence.
‘Who’d want to start a business here?’
Franciso Mena, the chair of the Alternativas anti-drug association, says the upshot has been a “lack of security – but it’s in certain places and because of some very determined people”.
But more pernicious, he says, in the longer term is the damage done to the region’s identity. “Who’d want to come and start a business here? Who’d want to come here as a teacher or a doctor when the image is basically that it’s not safe?”
One local resident wonders whether it doesn’t suit the authorities to turn a blind eye to the situation. “We think it’s a safety valve,” he says. “The government lets it happen because if they didn’t, people would lose it and go around robbing all over the place.”
Mena notes that even those on the lowest rung of the narco ladder are well remunerated. “The guy with a scooter and a mobile phone who keeps an eye out for the Guardia Civil and the national police will get €1,000 a day,” he says.
“The guys who haul it off the beach and into cars can get €3,000-€4,000 and the guys who drive the drugboats can make anything between €30,000 and €60,000 a trip.
“It’s a very lucrative business, but it’s also a very difficult business to leave once you’re in.”
Mena, who is a little exasperated by the fact that his association is now better known for speaking out about the narcos than for its decades of community work, is also lukewarm about the Medellín analogy.
“Things for people here are normal – they get up for work each day,” he says. Many have jobs at the port of Algeciras and thousands more cross over each day to work in Gibraltar. “It’s all normal because what’s happening with the hashish trade round here is not new.”
What is new is the scale of the violence. According to Mena, a line was crossed when officers were pelted with stones last spring: “It’s basically because the principle of authority has been lost.”
Speak to police associations and worries over that lost principle crop up frequently. Almost as frequent is the word desanimado – demoralised.
José Encinas, general secretary of the local Guardia Civil association, wants more personnel, more specialist units and more support. The Medellín comparisons, he says, provide “a very clear point of reference. We haven’t reached that extreme yet, but we worry that it could happen.”
He also points to the rising number of assault weapons that have been seized and the smugglers’ stark supremacy in the power and speed of their boats.
“It’s like having a Mercedes-AMG up against a Nissan Primera. That power difference is important. But the problem isn’t just speed, it’s also the sheer number of speedboats packed with hashish – there can be 10 or 15 crossing at the same time.”
Coronel Jesús Núñez, the regional Guardia Civil commander, acknowledges his officers face unique challenges. “It’s not usual in Spain for people to throw stones at the Guardia Civil and it’s not usual for traffickers to ram into Guardia Civil or police cars,” he says, but he insists morale is good.
Núñez says the recent deployment of the Rapid Action Group (Gar) – an elite Guardia Civil unit – to patrol the beaches has had an impact on trafficking. Similar improvements, he adds, occurred last summer before the Gar was sent to Catalonia to police autumn’s independence crisis.
‘Hostage to geography and economics’
According to the interior ministry, seizures of hashish across the region rose by 45% last year, while the amount of cocaine confiscated was up by 300%. “[But] the problem in La Línea isn’t just a police problem,” says Núñez. “If it were, you’d have the same problem elsewhere in Spain.”
Few in town would disagree that La Línea is a hostage to its history, geography and post-2008 economic circumstances.
“The solution needs to have a dual focus,” says Mayor Franco. “First, a big police deployment and proper long jail terms. But you also need social measures – you need training and education and you need to have jobs for people. It’s the only way to get rid of this scourge. What’s the alternative?”
The regional government of Andalusia has recently announced it will invest €56.5m in the area this year and is launching schemes to improve workers’ qualifications and give young people skills tailored to specific businesses.
But a hefty injection of private money and investor confidence will also be needed.
Franco is keen to show off the mega-yachts moored in the marina and, away from the fishermen’s houses and the ageing blocks of flats, a big La Línea hotel attracts retired Britons lured by full English breakfast buffets and the proximity of Gibraltar.
One slick restaurant offers grilled foie gras for €13 and local steak for €17.50, a further hint that this is really two towns and not one.
Franco wants La Línea to be more than a criminal petri dish, an escape valve or an incipient Medellín. Look, he says, at those miles of undeveloped beaches, the empty land by the Gibraltar border and the huge park that is too much for its gardeners.
With the right investment, job creation and sustainable tourism, he says, it could reinvent itself as a place that attracts families and older holidaymakers rather than drugs and baleful headlines.
But the mayor is a realist: “I’ll take Magaluf over narcos.”
