The agents arrest three people after landing the drugs in the early hours of the morning in the cove of La Granadella and two of them allege that they had gone fishing.

Part of the cache seized in the cove of La Granadella. /INFORMATION Closed 06 NOV 2025 17:24

A coordinated intervention of members of the Civil Guard from different units made it possible to thwart in the early hours of last Tuesday, in the light of an almost full moon, the landing of a cache of 4,200 kilograms of hashish in the tourist cove of La Granadella, a place overcrowded in the summer season and which had now been chosen.  without luck, by a network of drug traffickers to introduce drugs. The cache was transported from the south of the peninsula in a narco-boat that fled, as well as two other smaller inflatable boats, although one of them, stolen, was later abandoned in Benitatxell.

In addition to seizing the drugs, the Civil Guard arrested three people aged 38, 43 and 53, all of them Spanish and domiciled in towns in Valencia and Ibiza. The operation, led by the Organized Crime and Anti-Drug Team (EDOA) of the Organic Unit of the Judicial Police of the Civil Guard of Alicante and in which it had the support of the Local Police of Xàbia, remains open and new arrests of others involved who fled at a run and through the mountains when the Civil Guard burst into the cove where the attack took place are not ruled out. disembarkation, as sources close to the investigation have explained to this newspaper.

Likewise, 1,300 liters of gasoline  were seized divided into 52 25-liter bottles. This fuel was destined for a narco-boat of about fifteen meters in length that transported the drug from the south of the peninsula to the coast of Xabi. Two other smaller auxiliary inflatable boats participated in the landing. One of these had been stolen and could be recovered in a cove in Benitatxell, while the other two narco-boats fled by sea.

The three detainees, defended by lawyers Francisco Miguel Galiana Botella, Roberto Sánchez Martínez and Bogdan Moisienko, were handed over to the Dénia duty court  on Thursday and provisional detention without bail was decreed  for all of them. The three have disassociated themselves from the cache and two of them have alleged that they were in the area of the cove of La Granadella to fish.

The anti-drug operation was activated after the Complex Operational Center (COC) of the Command of the Civil Guard of Alicante detected, through the Integral System of External Surveillance (SIVE), a high-speed boat – narco-boat type – that was sailing towards the cove of La Granadella in Xàbia. EDOA troops and patrols from Calp company barracks – such as Xàbia, Moraira, Dénia and Pedreguer – were immediately mobilized to try to thwart the possible landing of drugs and succeeded.

Gasoline bottles seized in the anti-drug operation in Xàbia. /INFORMATION

The agents established a surveillance device in the vicinity of the cove of La Granadella and shortly before four in the morning three vans and a car arrived at the cove. The occupants got out of the vehicles and shortly after three inflatable boats arrived, one of them much larger than the others and loaded with burlap bales. Once on the shore, they began to unload the bales from the narco-boat and put them in two vans.

Arrests

At that moment, the few doubts that the agents had that it was a drug cache disappeared. The Civil Guards burst into the cove and although they stopped the suspects, there was a stampede in the night. The boats were able to put to sea and flee at high speed. The rest of those involved fled, some in a vehicle and others running through the mountains, but they left two vans with 105 bales of hashish, with an approximate gross weight of 4,200 kilos.

The Civil Guard arrested one of those involved on the same beach of La Granadella and two others when they were fleeing in a car. Another suspect managed to flee after abandoning the van in which he was driving, which crashed into a Civil Guard vehicle. The investigations are still open to arrest the rest of those involved who participated in the landing of drugs thwarted by the Civil Guard.