SPAIN seized more cannabis and cocaine than any other EU country in 2024, new data has shown, in what officials say confirms its role as a ‘gateway’ for drugs entering Europe.
Authorities confiscated more than 250 tonnes of cannabis and around 124 tonnes of cocaine in thousands of operations across the country that year, according to the latest report by the European Union Drugs Agency (EUDA).
The staggering figures account for 75% of all cannabis seized across the EU in 2024, as well as 37% of all cocaine.
The European Commissioner for Home Affairs and Migration, Magnus Brunner, insisted on Tuesday that Spain was ‘doing everything possible to improve the situation’ in the fight against drug trafficking.
“Spain is in a unique position because it serves as a gateway not only for itself but for the European Union as a whole, with most drugs entering from Latin America,” Brunner said at the presentation of the report.
Spain, France and Belgium together accounted for 67% of all cocaine seized across the EU in 2024, underlining the concentration of drug trafficking around the bloc’s major maritime ports.
The figures were released as calls grow to increase police funding along Spain’s south coast, where authorities have warned that traffickers are stepping up their operations.
Last month, Spain’s Guardia Civil seized a record 30 tonnes of cocaine south of the Canary Islands – a haul worth a staggering €812 million, according to court documents.
Also in May, two Guardia Civil officers died after their vessel collided with another while pursuing suspected drug traffickers off the coast of Almeria.
The incident sparked outrage across Spain, with police unions and officers accusing the central government of leaving forces along the country’s coastlines critically under-resourced.
The Guardia Civil union AUGC criticised the PSOE’s secretary-general for Andalucia, Maria Jesus Montero, after she described the tragedy as a “workplace accident”.
“Workplace accident, Mrs Montero?” the union wrote on X.
“The pattern is always the same: organised violence, insufficient resources, and the State looking the other way.”
The officers’ deaths came two years after two other Guardia Civil officers were killed off the coast of Barbate when a drug-running speedboat rammed their vessel.
That incident also triggered a national debate over policing resources along Spain’s southern coast amid growing concern over increasingly aggressive drug-trafficking operations.
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