Blow to illegal street vendors operating on the Costa del Sol: four arrested and almost 3,000 items of clothing seized

Benalmádena has been the scene of a major police operation against illegal street vending that has culminated in the arrest of four people and the seizure of 2,826 items, most of them clothes, bags and shoes.

According to information provided by Benalmádena town hall, some 56 officers took part in the operation, around 20 of them in plain clothes, including officers from the Local Police forces of Benalmádena and Torremolinos and the National Police. The action was carried out on the Fuente de la Salud beach, on the border between the Costa del Sol municipalities of Torremolinos and Benalmádena.

According to the information provided, the police operation began at 7.30pm on Monday (19 August), and the aim is "to carry it out periodically at different times and days throughout the coastal area to put a stop to this practice on the coast". Mayor Juan Antonio Lara praised the "collaboration and effort between different police forces and the success of the joint operation". He also stressed that there were no altercations during the operation.

Now, all the seized merchandise will be handed over to the courts, together with the detainees, with a report of the seizure of the items certifying whether they are counterfeit in order to process them in the case of a possible crime against intellectual property. All the merchandise that was abandoned on the public highway after some of the street vendors evaded the police will also be recorded in the report. All the counterfeit products will, after 15 days, be destroyed by the council's cleaning concessionaire, FCC.

It should be remembered that an altercation took place between the Benalmádena Local Police and street vendors on 8 August, which ended with four policemen injured and one person arrested, on the same stretch of the coast where Monday's operation took place. At the time, the Benalmádena Senegalese association said it regretted the injuries suffered by the police officers and one of their fellow countrymen, but added that "for some months now, physical force has been used against some of us, something that had never happened before". "The police have always asked us for our documents and even seized our merchandise, but without harming us," the association said.