Galician mafia
| Founding location | Spain |
|---|---|
| Territory | Spain, Portugal, France, United Kingdom |
| Ethnicity | Galician |
| Criminal activities | Drug trafficking, Cigarette smuggling, Assassination, Bank fraud, Bankruptcy, Blackmailing, Bribery, Contract killing, Infiltration of Politics, Money laundering, Murder, Police corruption, Political corruption, Witness intimidation, Witness tampering. |
| Allies | Colombian cartels, British crime firms, French Milieu, Martinez Familia Sangero |
Galician mafia (Galician: Mafia Galega) is a general term for the clan-based smuggling groups in the Spanish region of Galicia. Due to the activities of the organized criminal clans, Galicia is often cited as being the main European entry point for Colombian cocaine.
Galicia is one of Spain's more impoverished regions. Traditionally the region made its money from the fishing industry, to which the coastal geography of the region lent itself. Following the crippling of the fishing industry, local fishermen began smuggling tobacco to keep their business alive. The successfulness of these tobacco smuggling activities led to the creation of clan-based groups who made their entire living off smuggling.
Galician smuggling networks nowadays not solely concentrate on tobacco. It was when local criminal clans began making contacts in Colombia and Morocco that the illegal smuggling business began to thrive. Using their Colombian and Moroccan contacts, Galician organized crime groups traffic cocaine and hashish, aside from illegal tobacco, into the Spanish mainland. From Galicia it is distributed to major cities in Spain via other Galician contacts or via criminal groups consisting of Colombian expatriates. Drugs are frequently trafficked to the neighbouring regions of Portugal as well. Aside from Portugal, British organized crime groups have set up contacts in Galicia, often working together with Galician criminal clans to bring in narcotics which the British gangs in turn smuggle into and distribute in the United Kingdom. Currenty some clans are importing and distributing heroine, and have done business with the Albanian and Turkish mafias.
Criminal clans in the region have frequently been hostile to each other in recent years. While the Galician smuggling business in the beginning was very local, the internationalising of the organized criminal activities have led to crime-related clan feuds where murder, kidnapping and torture is occasionally committed by criminal Galician clan-members or Colombian contacts and contract killers.
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Wikipedia