June 08, 2023.- The National Police, in collaboration with the Customs Surveillance Service (AEAT), has arrested 27 people in the second phase of the Operation carried out on June 6 and that, together with the first phase that took place on May 30 with 12 more arrests, a total of 39 arrests of which 5 are already in prison.
At the beginning of the year 2022, research began in Valladolid on an important family clan, settled in the Barrio España of this capital, which dominated drug trafficking and organized crime in that part of the city.
At the beginning of the investigation, a large number of sacks and sachets with remains of marijuana plantations were detected in a landfill near the Carmen cemetery in Valladolid. Along with some of these sacks, evidence was found of the relationship of the indicated group with the effects found and therefore, with drug trafficking.
The specialty of this clan was the “indoor” cultivation of marijuana, that is, plantations that were carried out inside houses or warehouses of their property that they then “harvested” and introduced to the market. On the same street, the clan owned 7 houses, thus being able to exercise permanent control over them.
These plantations require an enormous supply of energy through heat lamps, for the rapid growth of the plants, energy that they obtained with illegal “hooks” to the network. One of the houses in which one of the plantations was located had an authentic underground tunnel, which ran about 5 meters, to a street light street, where they had “hooked”.
As soon as sufficient criminal evidence was found to inform the Judicial Authority, the corresponding police report was made, giving an account to Examining Court number five of Valladolid, which from the first moment decreed the secrecy of the proceedings.
In the progress of the investigations, the close connection of this family group with another powerful clan, historical of the city of Valladolid, settled in the neighborhood of Pajarillos, was detected and they were also being investigated in a different line by the National Police. The latter would be linked mainly to the sale of cocaine and heroin. At that time, the lines of work are extended by joining the two investigations in the so-called “Operation SANTO”.
The research has made it possible over the past few months to establish the channels of connection between the two groups, their operability and control of drug trafficking in the province of Valladolid and other nearby areas (in the case of Palencia and Segovia), their systems of supply, transport and points of concealment of the drug and the system of payments through exchanges, sometimes, of substances in certain operations.
The complexity of the clans investigated, as well as their dangerousness (different weapons are involved in their homes), mostly made up of the members of their families themselves, with a significant rooting for years in the neighborhoods in which they reside and a permanent control of them (one of the main ones investigated in Pajarillos was the owner of 5 of the 6 homes in the property in which he resides, as a clear security measure) have meant an enormous difficulty for the researchers.
Due to the complexity of the detailed research, its operational development was arranged in two phases:
First phase
In this phase, the operation aims to arrest all the people investigated and involved in the sale of marijuana, and to locate and neutralize the “indoor plantations”.
There were 16 house searches, seven of them in the España neighborhood, plus other searches in Cabezón de Pisuerga, Cubillas de Santa Marta, Aldeamayor de San Martín, Cigales, Villabañez, and another in Frómista (Palencia).
More than 3,500 cannabis plants with a total weight of 270 kilograms, 140 grams of cocaine, “cutting” substances, 4.6 kilograms of hashish, five cars, numerous mobile phones, different weapons and ammunition, and two hundred ninety thousand (290,000) euros in cash, came from drug trafficking.
In this first phase, 12 people were arrested, seven of whom were placed at the disposal of the Court of Instruction four of Valladolid, in the functions of the Guard, who ordered the imprisonment of five of them.
Second phase
In the early morning of June 6, a police device was developed against the rest of the network involved in the sale and distribution of narcotic substances, cocaine, heroin and hashish.
27 people were arrested in a joint operation in Valladolid capital, Cigales, Traspinedo, Villamuriel de Cerrato, Palencia capital, Madrid city, in the Segoviana district of Perogordo and Bilbao, where a total of 23 house searches have been carried out.
Pending the closure of the operation, interventions have been made: 23.4 kilograms of hashish, five kilograms of marijuana, 640 grams of cocaine, 130 grams of heroin, five long weapons, five short weapons, three simulated weapons, a lot of different ammunition, various white weapons, precision scales, a drone, uniformity of a police force, bulletproof vests, five vehicles, mobile phones and forty-five thousand two hundred forty 45,240 euros.
The Court of Instruction number 5 of Valladolid is responsible for the proceedings.
The police operation remains open, and no further arrests are ruled out.