Stolen van dumped in Níjar found packed with fuel for drug boats and migrant ‘taxis’

A stolen van abandoned on the edge of Níjar looked like a routine theft until Guardia Civil officers opened the back and found 77 canisters of petrol. Investigators believe the fuel was destined for drug-running speedboats and the small boats known as ‘pateras taxi’ that carry migrants along the coast. 

A theft in Granada led Guardia Civil to Almería

The investigation began in May, after a van was reported stolen in La Alpujarra, the mountainous inland district of the Granada province. Officers eventually traced it more than 150 kilometres south, to Níjar, the eastern Almería municipality that also takes in the Cabo de Gata-Níjar Natural Park. The van had been abandoned there, and inside the vehicle officers found a total of 77 plastic fuel containers full of petrol. The case quickly changed from an ordinary vehicle theft into something that was clearly much bigger.

The fuel network feeding narco-boats and migrant ‘taxis’

Guardia Civil believe the petrol was bought at a service station near Alhama de Murcia and driven south specifically to resupply boats working the Almería and Murcia coastline, a practice known locally as petaqueo. Two kinds of vessel rely on fuel drops like this one: Narcolanchas, that are fast and unmarked speedboats used to run drugs across from north Africa, and pateras taxi, which are smaller boats that carry migrants directly onto Spanish beaches for a fee (rather than leaving them to make the crossing unassisted).

Both need a steady, discreet supply of petrol that never has to touch a normal filling station near the coast, which is what makes networks like this one valuable to organised crime, and hard for officers to trace back to source.

Two men from Librilla were arrested with prior drug convictions

Guardia Civil arrested two men, aged 33 and 42, both residents of Librilla in the Región de Murcia. Both had previous convictions linked to drug trafficking, according to the investigation. They now face charges of theft for use of the van and an offence against collective safety, over the alleged storage of a large quantity of flammable fuel inside an unsecured vehicle.

Part of a wider crackdown on Murcia’s fuel-smuggling gangs

The arrests come just a week after the Guardia Civil dismantled a separate criminal group operating in Lorca and Puerto Lumbreras, in the Región de Murcia, accused of stealing tractors and running its own petaqueo racket. Six people were arrested there on August 17. Guardia Civil has not linked the two cases directly, but both fit a pattern seen along the Almería-Murcia coastline this summer. A separate operation was reported elsewhere in Spain that ended in 78 arrests and the seizure of assets worth €24 million, as authorities squeeze the same drug and migrant-smuggling supply chains from several directions at once.

Guardia Civil said the investigation into the Níjar case remains open, and further arrests have not been ruled out.