Six armed security guards guarded the drug boat with the giant stash of cocaine | Spain

The Civil Guard agents who assaulted the merchant ship Arconian On the high seas they encountered six heavily armed men, according to sources familiar with the operation. The cargo ship, which arrived this Sunday in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, was carrying something that continues to be weighed this Monday and has not yet been able to be accurately quantified.

During this Monday, part of the 23 detainees, the majority of Filipino and Dutch nationality, have been transferred to land and the boat has been searched. The agents seized at least three rifles and three semi-automatic pistols.

The drugs were hidden behind a metal wall sealed by welding. It seemed that there was nothing behind it, that the ship was ending, the same sources point out. Behind that partition, a number of bales still unquantified were found, although some sources suggest that there could be approximately 1,500. Always according to these estimates and in the absence of the judicial weighing providing concrete figures, the merchant could transport more than 30 tons of drugs, which would be a record figure in the fight against drug trafficking. One of the images of the area where the drug packages were found shows a narrow, elongated space with a large number of packages stacked irregularly. The bundles are white, black or silver and are tied with ribbons or ropes. Pipes, cables and ducts are visible on the ceiling.

Since the cargo ship arrived in Las Palmas, the agents have worked on examining the interior of the vessel and analyzing these packages, to check if they actually contain cocaine, and what their weight is, something that will be essential to give a real figure of the stash. The need to maintain the chain of custody of the stash at all times is slowing down the process. The case, which is under secrecy, is in the hands of the National Court.

The operation, led by the Central Operational Unit of the Civil Guard (UCO), has mobilized agents specialized in high-risk situations, such as the Special Intervention Unit (UEI), whose agents were in charge of entering and securing the ship. During the assault there were moments of tension, according to the sources consulted. The images known so far of the operation show at least six weapons, three rifles and three semi-automatic pistols. The latter had blue ropes or ropes tied to the butt and barrel of the weapon, as if they were improvised straps so that the bearer could hang the weapon and thus be able to hold it for long periods of time. The Unified Association of the Civil Guard (AUGC) has described the intervention as a “historic blow to drug trafficking” and has shared images of the weapons seized on board on its social network profile X.

The ocean ship Duke of Ahumadawith a crew of 25 people, and a Navy patrol boat have also been mobilized for this operation.

He Arconian It is a medium-sized cargo ship that had left Sierra Leone on April 22 and was destined for Benghazi, Libya. It was sailing under the flag of convenience of Comoros, an archipelago in southeast Africa located off the coast of Mozambique that offers lax legislation that is taken advantage of by shipowners. It was intercepted off the coast of Dakhla (the former Villa Cisneros), a city in Western Sahara.

Ships that transport large caches of cocaine usually transfer the cargo on the high seas to drug boats, which make increasingly longer journeys to land. The fact that these deliveries are made on the high seas has made the interventions of boats loaded with narcotics come sooner, to prevent the drugs from spreading and making it much more complicated to arrest those involved.

The largest stash of cocaine seized in Spain in a single operation. The drug was located in the Port of Algeciras in October 2024 and arrived in Spain hidden in a container from Ecuador and destined for Alicante. It was hidden among a load of bananas. At the beginning of 2026, the Police seized 9,994 kilos of cocaine on the high seas. This seizure is so far the largest seizure of cocaine in water in the history of this police force and the largest of the European police forces, according to sources in the investigation.