The semi-submersible located on Monday morning in the Ría de Arousa, in Galicia, has no drugs inside. This is how the Security Forces have been able to confirm it at noon on Tuesday after managing to refloat it and gain access to its interior. We are working on the hypothesis that it is a narco-submarine used by a drug trafficking network to cross the Atlantic loaded with drugs to Galicia, but no substance has been found inside, so it is considered that they could have unloaded it. before.
The boat was raised around 1:00 p.m. this Tuesday after an intense morning of operations in which a specialized company from O Grove first infused it with air and then managed to raise it. Once on the surface, she began to transfer it to the port of O Xufre, in the town of A Illa de Arousa, as it is the dock that meets the technical conditions to house it. Once there, a large crane will transfer it to land.
The Government delegate in Galicia, José Miñones, went to the port of Vilaxoán, in Vilagarcía, the closest to the place where the bathyscaphe was located, one mile from the coast, and confirmed that, after refloating it, a Initial inspection inside and confirmed to be empty. There was no drug and no trace of the crew.
A fisherman located the semi-submersible mid-morning on Monday and since then the Civil Guard, the Customs Surveillance Service and the National Police launched a rescue operation and an investigation to determine the nature of the vessel and its possible relationship with an operation of drug trafficking. On Monday afternoon it was necessary to suspend the inspection tasks due to bad weather conditions and this Tuesday they were resumed.
The tasks were restarted around 8:00 in the morning of this Tuesday. Throughout the morning, the Special Group for Underwater Activities of the Civil Guard (GEAS) of the Civil Guard carried out dives in the area to take measurements of the bathyscaphe and try to access the interior, but they were unable to enter because they could not open the hatch.
Finally, the tugboat Insuíña de Rande, from a company in O Grove, managed to raise it, they were able to enter and they verified that it was empty, but the complete inspection will have to wait until it reaches land. This is the same company that in 2019 rescued a ‘narco-submarine’ located in the also Galician estuary of Aldán, in the province of Pontevedra, the first ‘narco-submarine’ located in Europe.
The investigation has all the hypotheses open and one of them points to the fact that it is a narco-submarine involved in the appearance of two gliders that ran aground in the Coruña town of Ribeira two weeks ago. José Miñones insists that “all the hypotheses are open until we can access it” and The Government sub-delegate in Pontevedra, Maica Larriba, confirmed that there is “no clue about the charge” and “everything that has been said up to Now it’s pure speculation.”
The semi-submersible is similar to the narco-submarine located in Aldán in 2019, on that occasion loaded with cocaine. It could have the capacity to transport several tons of drugs. Maica Larriba explained that the boat has “larger dimensions than those considered” this Monday, since “it was very buried at the stern.” It can measure between 15 and 16 meters that was thought on Monday and the 22 meters of the previous one.
The operation was coordinated from an outpost where the Colonel of the Civil Guard in Pontevedra, Simón Venzal, and the maritime captain were located, and it was carried out “normally”. The maritime service, the helicopter and several Civil Guard patrols, several specialized units of the National Police and Customs Surveillance, which is using a drone for inspection, also worked in the area.
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