An underground tobacco factory and the first narco-submarine in Monda

The A-355, the drug traffickers' road, connects various towns and villages with the Costa del Sol. It passes through places like Ojén and Coín, where the police have carried out some major operations against organised crime, but it is Monda that stands out from the rest.

In this village, the authorities found a clandestine tobacco factory four metres underground, the first ever to be detected in Europe, and a warehouse in which the criminals had built a narco-submarine, something else which had been unheard of until that time.

This small village in the Sierra de las Nieves was chosen by an organised crime gang to set up the first underground tobacco factory in Europe. It was able to produce 3,500 cigarettes an hour and had been built beneath a container in a stable.

For a month, six men worked flat out down there; they ate and slept in the bunker, which was ventilated only by a closed air circuit that worked with a diesel-powered generator. In fact, on the day the police operation took place nobody had filled it with fuel because the bosses had been arrested at 5 o'clock that morning, during a raid. These 'moles' - not in the sense of infiltrators, but because they were living underground - were on the point of dying through asphyxiation, but the Guardia Civil arrived just in time and rescued them, although they then immediately placed them in handcuffs.

The police operation was called Hannibal and was carried out in February 2020. Twenty people were arrested and the police seized 153,000 packs of cigarettes which were ready for sale, 17,600 kilos of tobacco leaves, 20 kilos of hashish and 144 kilos of marijuana.

A year later, the authorities once again took action in Monda, this time as part of Operation Ferro, and they found a warehouse in which the first narco-submarine in Europe had been constructed. It measured nine metres in length, three metres in width and had a draft of three metres, and was ready to move two tonnes of cocaine. It was painted blue so it would go unnoticed in the sea, and was like an iceberg, because only a tiny part of it was visible above the water.

This operation was carried out by the National Police in collaboration with forces in other countries - the Netherlands, Portugal, the UK, Colombia and the USA - and coordinated by Europol.

The police successfully broke the gang up completely by arresting 52 people, of whom 32 went to prison, and confiscated over 3,000 kilos of cocaine in raids which were carried out in South America and Spain.