The candidate for re-election as president of the Junta of Andalusia, the popular Juanma Moreno Bonilla, warned this Saturday that drug trafficking has become a “very serious” problem for Andalusia and for Spain, where it has recently claimed several lives, such as the two members of the Civil Guard who died yesterday in the line of duty in Huelva while pursuing a drug-running speedboat. “We are going to win this battle with the effort of society and the drive and capability of the Civil Guard and the National Police,” he added
Read more Ayuso, Hernán Cortés and the wardrobe of Madrid
Moreno made these remarks upon leaving the wake set up at the Civil Guard Command in Huelva. The Socialist candidate for the Junta, María Jesús Montero, also visited but did not make any statements. The absence of the Interior Minister, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, was notable; coinciding with the start of the mass, he was in Madrid holding a press conference about the logistics of the arrival in Tenerife of the cruise ship Hondius affected by hantavirus. However, the Secretary of State for Security, Aina Calvo, and the director of the Civil Guard, Mercedes González, were present.
Meanwhile, in Seville, the large Andalusian flag at the entrance to the community’s capital at the start of Andalucía Avenue was flying at half-mast since Friday. The regional government has decreed two days of official mourning and the electoral campaign has been suspended until tomorrow, Sunday. Pedro Sánchez’s rally at Línea de la Concepción, scheduled for today, has been postponed to tomorrow, Sunday.
The accident in which the two Civil Guards, a guard and a captain, died was a matter of bad luck. The collision occurred between two vessels of the Civil Guard itself. The patrol boat Río Antas of the Civil Guard Maritime Service rammed a rigid inflatable boat carrying four other Civil Guards as they tried to block the passage at sea of a drug-running speedboat.
The collision occurred around 11 a.m. about 150 kilometers from the coast, between Punta Umbría and Mazagón. Two other agents were injured in the accident, one seriously and still hospitalized in the Jérez hospital.
One of the deceased is Captain Jerónimo J. M., born in Málaga and a member of the Civil Guard since 1994. He had previously been in the Legion’s special operations. He was in Guipúzcoa during the years of lead, between 1999 and 2005. Later he worked in the commands of Córdoba and Málaga, also in Alhaurín el Grande until, in 2020, he joined the SIVE (Integrated External Surveillance Service) team. Like his colleague, during his long professional career he received numerous decorations and medals.
Germán P. G. was from Aragon, born in Teruel, and joined the Civil Guard in 1989. His first assignment was in Tarragona and he joined the maritime service very early, in 1992. He arrived in Huelva two years later, which made him, after spending so many years controlling the coasts, a true expert of the area and of the fight against trafficking on the Andalusian coasts.
Read more Putin, against the ropes
Andalusia
The two deceased were experienced agents with numerous distinctions for their work
The accident prompted an immediate reaction from the Civil Guard organizations that have been warning for years about the precariousness of the resources they have in their battle against drug traffickers.
The accident record confirms the lack of means. The most remembered is the one that occurred in February 2024 on the Barbate coast when two other Civil Guards died after a drug traffickers’ speedboat rammed the precarious boat pursuing them. In October 2025, an agent of the Portuguese National Republican Guard died under similar circumstances.
Drug trafficking is widespread along the entire Andalusian coast, as the president of the Junta of Andalusia, Juanma Moreno, acknowledged yesterday in an interview with Diario de Sevilla, in which he states that in the last eight years “we have seen how it has spread like a stain along 900 kilometers of the Andalusian coast, from Almería to Punta Umbría.”
The rooting of drug trafficking is related to the high unemployment rate among younger generations – an endemic problem in Andalusia that no government has managed to solve – and the precariousness of wages. The situation drives some young people to enter the profitable and accessible drug business and another secondary activity, the so-called petaqueo, which guarantees the fuel supply to the fast boats.
However, these young people are only the labor force of organizations that make a lot of money and are increasingly strong and violent. A year ago, images of drug traffickers operating in the Guadiana marshes armed with assault rifles surprised everyone. Except, of course, the Civil Guard, which has long been warning that they increasingly face drug traffickers who use war ammunition to protect their shipments.
Read more The Angliru crowns Paula Blasi as the winner of the Vuelta a España
