Drug traffickers in Andalucia are luring in young recruits through their brazen social media channels, the Spanish Eye can reveal.
The so-called narcos boast openly about their criminal lifestyles on video platforms like TikTok.
Dozens of videos document their activities, including running gasoline to drug boats in the Strait of Gibraltar.
One account shows a room full of men all holding automatic rifles.
Worryingly, one comment reads: ‘I’m 15 years old and I want to start.’
Some clips compile ‘greatest hits’ of southern traffickers: unloading drug bundles on beaches, fleeing from Guardia Civil patrol boats, or dodging the customs service helicopter.
Many of the videos are set to music, more often than not, tracks associated with drug-world bravado.
One viral TikTok clip shows traffickers racing across the Strait, dropping off cargo on Cadiz beaches and even mocking Guardia Civil officers.
Among the most shared content are scenes from northern Morocco showing donkeys loaded with hashish bales. The swagger is so pronounced that one compilation is titled simply: ‘Who rules the sea?’
Sources involved in anti-drug operations say those in southern Spain have no issue flaunting their lifestyle.
This could be due to the poverty in areas like the Campo de Gibraltar – an environment that criminal networks like to exploit.
That may explain why TikTok posts from Andalucia showing traffickers at work – piloting high-powered boats, unloading shipments, or ferrying fuel drums to crews waiting offshore – attract thousands of comments.
Some viewers cheer them on, others excuse the behaviour as a way to ‘make a living’, and some even advertise cut-price cocaine and hashish in the comment sections.
In recent years, clans along the Guadalquivir River have shifted heavily into cocaine trafficking, which is far more profitable than hashish. Prices have fallen, activity has increased and so, too, has the presence of firearms and associated violence.
The narco-videos come with hashtags and titles that leave little doubt about their purpose: ‘En la goma’ (referring to the rigid-hulled narcolanchas), ‘GoFast’, ‘Vida loca’, ‘Lanchas rápidas’.
Others point directly to the locations where they were filmed: Almerimar, Coria del Río, the Strait of Gibraltar, Cala del Carnaje in Cabo de Gata.
