Police union issues stark Spain youth narco alert

A SPANISH police union warned yesterday that young people in the poorer south were flocking to work for flush narco gangs as they rise in power in an area where security forces are now reluctant to be posted.

The stark warning came days after some 40 people — some of whom said to be linked to drug mafias — attacked nine Guardia Civil police officers on their time off in Algeciras, part of the southern province of Cadiz, a drug trafficking hotspot.

“Before the mafias avoided us, now this new generation of narcos are challenging security forces directly, they use guns, and they have professionals, we’re now noting the presence of sicarios,” Alberto Moya, head of the AUGC Guardia Civil union, told Spanish radio.

“These people employ legions of youth,” he revealed, pointing to the high unemployment rate in this poorer area of southern Spain as one of the reasons.

“These people can pay salaries that not even a multinational could pay its executives,” Moya said, adding many police agents didn’t want to be posted in the area “because their work is difficult, they can be recognized, they fear for their family.”

This is not the first incident in the area, where drug traffickers have recently also unloaded drugs in broad daylight and stormed a hospital to free a suspected drug trafficker.

According to the interior ministry, 40 percent of all drugs into Spain arrive via Cadiz.