Portuguese and Spanish Police Seize 3.35 Tonnes of Cocaine, With Almost Half Found in a Van Stopped in Evora

Portugal's Polícia Judiciária (Judicial Police) and Spain's National Police have dismantled a trafficking ring moving cocaine from Latin America into Europe, seizing 3,350 kilograms of the drug and arresting three men in a joint operation revealed on 19 August. The haul, worth tens of millions of euros on the street, is among the largest cross-border cocaine seizures the two forces have announced this year.

Two of the suspects were detained in southern Spain — in Torremolinos and Marbella, on the Costa del Sol in Málaga province — while the third was arrested in Portugal. Investigators also recovered three firearms and two vehicles, and say all three men will remain in preventive custody in the two countries while the case proceeds.

A traffic stop in Évora broke the case open

The Portuguese leg of the operation turned on a roadside interception. A Guarda Nacional Republicana (GNR, National Republican Guard) traffic patrol stopped a vehicle near Évora, in the Alentejo, and found it packed with 1,530 kilograms of cocaine — almost half the total seized. Behind the wheel was a 37-year-old foreign national, who was arrested on the spot. Inside the same vehicle officers found two automatic weapons, loaded and ready to fire, underlining how heavily armed the courier network was prepared to be.

The remainder of the cocaine was recovered mainly at a property in Torremolinos, where Spanish officers moved in on the group's logistics base. According to the investigators, the network had shipped the drug from Latin America using high-speed vessels, transferring the cargo at sea before landing it and running it onward by road toward its final markets in Europe.

An investigation weeks in the making

The joint inquiry began on 11 August, when authorities on both sides of the border picked up intelligence that a vehicle was ferrying drugs between Portugal and the Costa del Sol. Over the following days the two police forces tracked the movements of the group, coordinating the near-simultaneous arrests and searches that closed the operation eight days later. The Judicial Police handled the Portuguese side under the supervision of the Public Prosecutor's Office, which directs criminal investigations in Portugal.

Cross-Iberian cooperation of this kind has become routine on the cocaine route. Portugal and Spain sit at the western edge of Europe's Atlantic seaboard, making their long coastlines and busy ports natural entry points for cargo crossing from South America. The Judicial Police's anti-trafficking units regularly work maritime intelligence with Spanish counterparts and with European agencies, and large seizures at sea or on land near the border have recurred throughout 2026.

What this means

For residents, the case is a reminder that the quiet roads of the interior are part of a continental supply chain, not separate from it: the single biggest slice of this shipment was found not at a port but on an Alentejo highway. It also shows the pattern behind the headlines — cocaine landed by boat on the Iberian coast, consolidated at safe houses in southern Spain, and trucked north. Each seizure removes one link, but the route itself, and the money and weapons that travel with it, remains firmly in place.