Organized crime has spread to every corner of the Costa del Sol.

In front of the place where, just over a week ago, the blood of two strong men spilled onto the tiles, two retired couples (the only Spaniards in sight) are savoring a espetos, three beers, and a Verdejo. The letters of the Irish bar, Monaghan’s, located right on the promenade of Fuengirola (Málaga), no longer exist. As if removing the name from the establishment where one of the most scandalous crimes of the Costa del Sol this year occurred somehow erased what happened inside. Families dragging beach chairs walk past its door without stopping. To one side flow the beer and sardines, some bottles of champagne with sparklers to celebrate birthdays in English, happy hour, menthol cigarettes, the waiters hug the female customers, sports cars roar, rock music plays, and dozens of tourists cook themselves in the sun without any need for summer to have arrived yet. “This isn’t Marbella. Things like this don’t happen here,” concludes a hospitality worker who asks not to be named. As if bullets knew about regional boundaries, as if the hitman who killed two men with terraces overflowing on a Saturday night had been a mirage. As if in the jewel of Spanish tourism any corner remained safe from the violence of drug trafficking.

In the province of Málaga, since last Good Friday, there has been no week of truce. The police have documented seven shootings, four men killed, and several others wounded. The ease of pulling the trigger isn’t new in the province, but the terror has shifted to more family-friendly areas, like Fuengirola, where two men were shot down in a crowded terrace on Champions final night, right on the promenade. A camera that recorded the moment, in the style of Medellín or Mexico City, has shattered the common belief that it’s “only among them,” that this doesn’t affect those living there who aren’t involved in anything suspicious. This spring of shootings and settling of accounts has revived the ghosts of the worst years in 2018 and 2019, with around twenty corpses in the streets caused by multiple factors within the dozens of organized crime gangs. Many of these gangs have been established here since the sixties, visible to all, when Francoism promoted a resort for the enjoyment of the criminal jet set, and in the last decade, it has spiraled out of control.

On the night Luis Enrique lifted the Champions Cup and dedicated it to his daughter who passed away at nine, at the precise moment half the world emotionally cheered for a father being hoisted into the air by his players in a distant stadium, a hooded man got out of a car parked in the most crowded area of Fuengirola. It was 11:30 p.m. on Saturday, May 31. And there, with TVs still on, the hooded man approached the table of Eddie Lyons Jr. and Ross Monaghan and shot one of them point-blank in the chest. Ross ran inside the establishment, who knows if seeking refuge in the bathrooms. In the video published in the Scottish Sun another man can be seen running between the hitman and the Scotsman. He falls, colliding with the wall, stumbling in the certainty that one of those bullets would take him down too. But no. The hooded man, like in a hunting scene, knew well the name those bullets carried that ended up slicing the abdomen of the man in the white shirt on four occasions. “The police told us not to say a word to the press,” concludes the owner of the business.

They didn’t come to their village to kill them. They had to come to Fuengirola. The crime of the Scotsmen has transported a gang war from Glasgow to the Costa del Sol. As had previously happened with Swedish, Marseillais, or Irish mafias. Ross had been attempted on in his country in 2017, when he went to drop his daughter off at school, explained the BBC, which, like various British media, covered the news of that Saturday. The bullet then only grazed his shoulder. And, according to the Scottish press, he and his partner, heads of the legendary Lyons gang, had decided to move to where the drug business is done in Europe: the Costa del Sol. A battle escalated this March in Scotland, with a series of violent confrontations between gangs that ended with 30 arrests and culminated 3,000 kilometers from their homeland: with the blood of the two bosses on the promenade Rey de España, number 206. This Friday, the alleged hitman was captured in Liverpool (United Kingdom).

Fuengirola isn’t Marbella. Although for an outsider, it’s almost impossible to distinguish in this strip of land stretching 90 kilometers between the sea and mountains, with cramped apartments, chalets overtaking the hills, and dozens of men and women whose only apparent job is to go to the gym, in which municipality it is located. The only thing visually separating Fuengirola from other more exclusive spots on the Costa del Sol is money. And it is the €21.2 billion generated by tourism in this region that not only supports its economy but also its nightmares. The lead that has plagued the area for years, transformed into the global headquarters for not only sun and beach but also over 100 international drug trafficking gangs, according to the Ministry of the Interior, is seen by many residents as a toll, the price to pay to continue making money in one of the most coveted tourist spots in Europe.

No one wants to look at the corner of the nameless bar. Just as no one wants to know anything about why a Brit was shot multiple times at the end of April after leaving a football match with friends at the Naundrup sports club in a well-off area of Mijas (half an hour’s drive from there). Nor do we know who mourned for the corpse of another man found bound, showing signs of torture and in a state of decomposition, on a farm in that same municipality, just 48 hours later. The younger ones continue to fill the nightclubs, despite the fact that a small dispute can end with a gunfight.

In the Costa del Sol, the perception of security resembles that of a Caribbean town overwhelmed by tourism and the narco rather than any other corner of Spain that prides itself on being one of the safest countries in the world. Thus, those living and working here have adopted the language imposed by violence: “Here it’s safe, there [20 minutes away], it’s not”; “they kill each other”; “those who die had done something.” Verbs and expressions unfamiliar to someone from Toledo or Valladolid are used: a drug turnover (stealing the merchandise from a rival); “to eliminate” someone instead of killing them. Anyone knows that in a car, you shouldn’t provoke a confrontation; something that in other places would be resolved with four insults, here you don’t know who you’re dealing with. Long-established families of Marbella no longer go to Puerto Banús or dinner at one of the restaurants in Nueva Andalucía because they avoid the areas where they might encounter them.

“Still, people aren’t very aware. And when these things happen, most prefer not to speak ill of the area because it damages our image,” says Javier Lima, founding partner of the Marbella Activa residents’ association. “The problem is that when you act as if nothing is happening, you normalize it,” he continues. “The respect for life we have in Europe can be lost; crossing from one side to the other isn’t so difficult,” warns Lima.

No official from the Fuengirola City Council, nor from Mijas and Marbella, has wanted to answer this newspaper’s questions about the recent shootings. The mayor of Fuengirola, Ana María Mula, has been juggling recently to avoid discussing the murder of the Scotsmen while simultaneously asking in a public event for more resources from the state to combat organized crime. A request that adds to the demands of the local security forces, which for years have been warning about the ease of acquiring a firearm. “Even in any record, no matter how minor the crime, there are weapons. A priori they have them to defend themselves from other organizations… But we are at the limit where they could use them against us or any citizen passing by without being involved,” warns a police officer to Adolfo Kunjuk News.

In a recent shooting in Marbella, a stray bullet ended up hitting the body of an Uber parked in front of a nightclub with its driver inside. “It almost killed a civilian,” warns an agent. “And the worst part is that in the end, all this is very cheap for them,” indicate several consulted sources. They clarify that the meager penalties for murders and the slow pace of justice —which in many cases ends up reducing prison sentences further— are causes of constant anger among police forces. In many cases, investigators spend months or years tracking a group of narcos who, once arrested, spend little time in provisional prison or even avoid it due to judicial errors, as recently happened with three of those arrested in Operation Epicurean.

Almost everyone knows how to differentiate them, and some even manage to avoid attracting them. “You try things… I’ve realized that one trick to keep them from coming to the restaurant is to use a more feminine decor,” says a chef from one of the wealthiest areas of Marbella, Nueva Andalucía. Large houses among palm trees a few meters from Puerto Banús where everyone knows those who can shoot when they want to. That same chef recalls a scene at a roundabout on the way to his business: “The police had opened the trunk of one of those fancy cars. Well, there were at least four kalashnikovs there,” he ends. The most complex aspect of this area is that anyone among the dozens of people working for organized crime could be your neighbor.

A real estate agent selling homes to millionaires from all over the world who, especially after the pandemic, choose to settle for long periods on the coast, cuts off questions about whether insecurity affects his business: “For many of us coming from abroad, our countries are less secure than this one. There are more shootings there than here.” And he claims that what happens outside these fortresses does not affect them, not yet. Luis García, the Marketing and Communication Director of Higuerón Resort, one of the most exclusive hotel complexes in the province, assures that the Costa del Sol brand remains attractive for tourism, although he admits: “Of course the incidents that have occurred aren’t positive for the destination, but they are isolated situations and outside the daily life of our residents and visitors, linked to groups that we don’t want in our surroundings.”

Those living and working in the Costa del Sol know that the mixture of drug and tourism, wherever attempted, has never gone well. Numerous examples around the world exist where bullets grazed beach umbrellas first, and then blood ended up clouding the crystal-clear waters without an authority managing to control the monster at that time. An animal, that in the paradoxical case of this corner of southern Spain, additionally has a hundred heads and hundreds of armed arms, where an argument in Glasgow, Marseille, or Amsterdam can trigger terror just meters from a family in Málaga without any authority being able to do anything to prevent it. A hospitality worker who prefers not to speak further on the matter over the phone warns: “Of course we are worried, but many won’t admit it. But what happened at Monaghan’s and what happens in Marbella can happen to anyone.”