Organized crime is already extended through all corners of the Costa del Sol | Spain
Facing the place where the blood of two fornids watered the tiles, two retiree marriages (the only Spaniards in sight) savor a spiny, three reeds and a Verdejo. The letters of the Irish bar, the Monaghan’s, in the middle of the Paseo Marítimo de Fuengirola (Málaga), no longer exist. As if he had removed the name of the premises where he committed One of the most scandalous crimes From the Costa del Sol this year, it will erase at once what happened in there. Families that drag beach chairs pass through their door and do not stop. On one side run the beer and sardines, some bottles of champagne with flares to celebrate birthday in English, Happy Hourmentalized cigarettes, the waiters hug the clients, roars sports, dozens of tourists are cooked in the sun without the need for summer. « This is not Marbella. Those things don’t happen here, » says a hotelier who asks his name not to appear. As if the bullets knew of regional borders, as if the hitman who killed two men with the terraces to overflow on a Saturday night would have been a mirage. As if in the jewel of Spanish tourism there is some corner safe from drug trafficking violence.
In the province of Malaga There has not been since last Good Friday A week of truce. Police have registered seven shootings, four murdered men and many other injured. The ease of trigger is not new in the province, but terror has moved to more familiar areas, such as Fuengirola, where two men were riddled on a terrace full of people, the night of the Champions League final, on the very promenade. A camera that recorded the moment, in the style of Medellín or Mexico City, has sprayed the general belief that it is « only among them », that that, those who live there and do not dedicate themselves to anything weird, does not affect them. This spring of shootings and account adjustments has revived the ghosts of the worst years, in 2018 and 2019, With about twenty corpses in the streets caused by multiple factors’ account adjustments between dozens of organized crime bands. Many settled here from the sixties in view of all, when Franco promoted a resort for the enjoyment of the Jet Set criminal and that in the last decade they have gone out of hand.
The night Luis Enrique The Champions Cup raised And she was dedicated to her deceased daughter with nine years, at the precise moment in which half the world was excited with the celebration of a father flying through the air pushed by her players in a distant stadium, a hooded man got off a car parked in the most busy area of Fuengirola. It was 23.30 on Saturday, May 31. And there, with the televisions still lit, the hood man reached the table of Eddie Lyons Jr. and Ross Monaghan and shot him in the chest to one of them. Ross ran in the establishment, who knows if looking for a shelter in the bathrooms. In it Video published in the Scotish Sun Another man is seen running between the hitman and the Scottish. How it falls, it hits the wall, stumbling for the security that one of those bullets was going to swallow it too. But not. The hooded man, as in a hunt, knew well the name they had written those projectiles that ended up cutting up up to four times the abdomen of the man with the white shirt. « The police have told us not to say a word to the press, » says the business owner.
In their town they did not find them to kill them. They had to come to Fuengirola. The crime of the Scots He has moved a Glasgow cartels war to the coast of the Sun. as before it happened with the Swedish, Marseille or Irish mafias. Ross had tried to kill him in his country in 2017, when he had gone to take his daughter to school, explained the BBC, which as different British media echoed the news of that Saturday. The bullet at that time only reached his shoulder. And, according to the Scottish press, he and his partner, capos of the legendary Lyons band, had decided to move to the place where drug businesses are done in Europe: the Costa del Sol. A battle that was intensified this March in Scotland, with a series of accounts settings between gangs that ended with 30 detainees, and culminated at 3,000 kilometers from its place of origin: with the blood The Paseo Marítimo Rey de España, number 206. This Friday has been captured in Liverpool (United Kingdom) the alleged hitman.
Fuengirola is not Marbella. Although for an stranger it is almost impossible to distinguish in this 90 -kilometer land language between the sea and the mountain, of tight apartments, chalets that eat the hills and dozens of men and women whose only apparent employment is to go to the gym, in which municipality it is located. The only thing that separates a fuengirola look from other more exclusive points on the Costa del Sol is money. And they are the 21.2 billion euros that enters tourism of this region what vertebra not only its economy, but also its nightmares. The lead that has ravaged the area for years, converted at the global headquarters not only of the sun and the beach, but also of more than 100 bands of international drug trafficking, according to the Ministry of Interior, is seen by many residents as a toll, the price to be paid to continue earning money in one of the most coveted points of tourism in Europe.
Nobody wants to look at the corner of the bar without a name. Nor does anyone want to know anything about which They sewed a British at the end of April When leaving a football match with friends at the Naundrup Sports Club, in an area of houses well -off in Mijas (half an hour by car from that place). You don’t know anything who cried to the body of another man who appeared handcuffedwith signs of torture and in a state of decomposition, in a farm in that same municipality, only 48 hours later. The youngest continue to fill the discos, although a small discussion can end up in a fight.
On the Costa del Sol, the perception of security is more like that of a Caribbean town devoured by tourism and the narco than that of any other corner of Spain, which is proud to be one of the safest countries in the world. Thus, those who live and work here have appropriated the language that imposes violence: « Here is safe, there (20 minutes), no »; « They kill each other »; « Those who die had done. » Verbs and expressions are used that for someone from Toledo or Valladolid are alien: a drug turnaround (steal the merchandise to a rival); « Remove » someone, instead of killing him. Anyone knows that with the car should not cause a confrontation, something that would be resolved with four insults, here you do not know who you are getting into. The lifelong families of Marbella are no longer going to Puerto Banús or dinner at one of the restaurants in Nueva Andalucía because they live dodging the areas where they can be found.
« Even so, people are not very conscious. And when these things happen, most prefer not to speak badly of the area, because it damages our image, » says the founding partner of the Marbella Activa Neighbors Association, Javier Lima. « The problem is that when you do as nothing happens, you normalize it, » he continues. « The respect for the life we have in Europe can be lost, moving from one side to the other is not so difficult, » says Lima.
No person in charge of the City of Fuengirola, nor of Mijas and Marbella, wanted to answer the questions of this newspaper about the last shootings. The mayor of Fuengirola, Ana María Mula, had been juggling these days to not talk about the murder of the Scots and ask at the same time in a public act more resources to the State to combat organized crime. A request that adds to the demands of the security forces and bodies in the area, which They have been warning years of the ease of acquiring a firearm. “Already in any record, retail that is the crime, there are weapons. A priori They have them to defend themselves from other organizations … but we are at the limit that they use them against us or any citizen who passes by the side without having anything to do, ”warns El País.
In a recent shooting in Marbella, a lost bullet ended up impacting the body of an Uber that was parked at the door of a disco with its driver inside. « I almost kill a civil« , Warns an agent. » And the worst thing is that in the end all this is very cheap, « they indicate several of the sources consulted. They clarify that the few penalties for the murders and the slowness of the justice – which in many cases ends up lowering the years of prison – are cause of permanent anger between the police forces. In many cases, the investigators spend months or years after a group of narcos, provisional imprisonment or even avoid it thanks to judicial errors, As happened a few weeks ago with three of the detainees in the Epicurero Operation.
Almost everyone knows how to differentiate them and even some manage to avoid attracting them. « You try things … I have realized that a trick not to come to the restaurant is to use a more feminine decoration, » says a chef from one of the most wealthy areas of Marbella, Nueva Andalucía. Casonas between palm trees a few meters from Puerto Banús where everyone knows that there sleep those who want to kill themselves. That same chef remembers a scene in a roundabout on the way to his business: “The police had opened the trunk of one of those coach that carry. Well, because there were at least four Kaláshnikov”, He finishes. The most complex thing in this area is that any of the dozens of people who work for organized crime can be your neighbor.
A real estate agent who sells houses to the millionaires around the world who, especially after the pandemic, decide to settle long seasons on the coast, set the questions about whether insecurity is affecting their business: « For many of those who come from outside, our countries are more insecure than this. There are more shootings there than here. » And ensures that what happens outside these strengths does not affect them, not yet. The marketing and communication director of Higuerón Resort, Luis García, one of the most exclusive hotel complexes in the province, says that the brand of the Costa del Sol remains attractive to tourism, although he acknowledges: “Of course, the incidents that have occurred are not positive for destiny, but they are isolated situations and out of the daily life of our residents and visitors, linked to groups that nobody wants in our environment”.
Those who live and work on the Costa del Sol know that the narco and tourism cocktail, where it has been attempted, has never gone well. There are numerous examples in the world where the bullets were touching the umbrellas, first, and then the blood ended Control the monster. An animal, which in the paradoxical case of this corner of southern Spain, also has A hundred heads and another hundreds of armed armswhere a anger in Glasgow, in Marseille or in Amsterdam, can detonate terror a few meters from a family in Malaga without an authority being able to do anything to prevent it. A hotelier who prefers not to talk about the subject by phone warns: « Of course we are worried, what happens is that many will not recognize it. But what happened in the Monaghan’s and what happens in Marbella can happen to anyone. »
