Operacion Dragon Now

The dragon was slain, but the lesson remains: along the coast of Galicia, when the fog rolls in and a fishing boat runs without lights, old habits die hard.

This was the final strike of , the largest anti-narcotics operation in Spanish history up to that point. Operacion Dragon

Prologue: The Hero’s Return

By the early 2000s, a loose federation of three families—the Charlines, the Míguez, and the Padín—controlled the route. They would meet Colombian "go-fast" boats (known as planeadoras ) 200 miles off the Portuguese coast, transfer the drugs, and then blend into the thousands of legitimate fishing vessels returning to port. They were ghosts. The dragon was slain, but the lesson remains:

As the first rope hit the bollard, heavily armed officers of the Grupo Especial de Actuaciones (GEO) swarmed the deck. They didn’t find fish. Hidden beneath a false floor in the refrigerated hold, wrapped in lead foil and submerged in wax to avoid radar and sniffer dogs, were 650 kilograms of pure cocaine. They would meet Colombian "go-fast" boats (known as