Name: I Joined Agents Hunting the Fast Boats Flooding Europe with Cocaine
Uploaded: 2026-09-24T16:00:00Z
Duration: 3 min 48 s
Description: Aboard a Spanish law enforcement vessel, WSJ’s Sune Rasmussen explains how drug traffickers have shifted tactics to smuggle record amounts of cocaine into Europe.

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Aboard a Spanish law enforcement vessel, WSJ’s Sune Rasmussen explains how drug traffickers have shifted tactics to smuggle record amounts of cocaine into Europe. Photo: Manu Brabo for WSJ

https://m.wsj.net/video/20260922/ed736a6b-160c-42a6-af65-3d6f91ac369c/1/hls/manifest-hd-wifi.m3u8

Aboard a Spanish law enforcement vessel, WSJ’s Sune Rasmussen explains how drug traffickers have shifted tactics to smuggle record amounts of cocaine into Europe.

I Joined Agents Hunting the Fast Boats Flooding Europe with Cocaine

It's close to 2:00 AM and I'm out here at sea with a team of Spanish customs agents who are hunting for drug boats.

Europe has been flooded with record amounts of cocaine, and the Strait of Gibraltar here between South Spain and Morocco has become one of the busiest gateways for South American cocaine going via Western Africa and North Africa into Europe.

Cocaine consumption is booming in Europe. According to the EU's drug agency, authorities seized seven times more cocaine in 2023 than just a decade before. Law enforcement agencies have managed to disrupt some of the flow into Europe, but in Spain, they're now facing a shift in tactics. Instead of mostly smuggling product through major ports in massive containers, traffickers increasingly use fast, powerful speed boats loaded up with drugs, known locally as narcolanchas, and seen here in footage shared by a drug trafficker. The boats are so fast that most law enforcement vessels can't keep up. And even when they can, going at 60 knots or 70 miles an hour, intervening is extremely dangerous.

So we've just entered the Guadalquivir river, which runs from the Atlantic Ocean and then far in towards the center of Spain, an ideal territory for drug traffickers.

If they make it far enough, they can drop their loads of cocaine to be picked up in trucks and transported further into Spain and north to the rest of Europe. Southern Spain is now one of the most important gateways for cocaine into Europe. In 2024, authorities seized twice as much as the year before, 51 tons in total. And this year, one seizure alone of Spain's Canary Islands contained over 30 tons of cocaine, the largest shipment ever confiscated anywhere.

So this is one of the speed boats that Spanish customs agents have confiscated. This one comes with three engines in the back. Sometimes they come with four, each with 400 horsepower. So this boat can go up to 60 knots or 60 miles an hour. There's usually a crew of four people on a boat like this. In the back is a guy that runs the radar, so he monitors the sea so they can avoid law enforcement. These two here take care of the cargo and the fuel, and then the guy in the front pilots the boat. One of the unique features with these boats is that they're semi-rigid, so underneath this inflatable rubber edge that protects the boat is a rock hard fiberglass edge. And that's also what makes them dangerous in the case of a collision with law enforcement. So this is where the traffickers store the drugs, and this boat can carry between two and a half and three and a half tons of cargo. So if it's full of cocaine, well, that means that this boat is carrying goods with a street value of roughly $200 million once the cocaine reaches the streets of northern Europe. The drugs will normally be stored up to here in solid blocks, and then the crew, which takes turns piloting the ship and keeping a lookout, they will camp on top of the drugs using tarpaulins or tents as a shelter against the wind and the rain and the sun. Crews will usually spend days, sometimes weeks, sometimes up to a month at sea while they wait to unload the cargo from a container ship and then take it to shore.

The risk of harm and capture are worth it for the sheer amount of money just one of these boats can make. And as long as the international drug trade is as profitable as it is, authorities like these Spanish officials will be fighting a battle that's very difficult to win.