The timing of the combined Guardia Civil-National Police raid on Palma’s Son Banya on Tuesday owed a good deal to the weather in Mallorca.
‘Operación Fibló’, the latest operation to target Mallorca’s ‘drugs supermarket’, coincided with the arrangements of the drugs clans in the shanty town. They were aware of the weather forecast, as also were their clients. What typically happens when there are alerts for heavy rain is that buyers make their purchases earlier than usual. In order to satisfy demand, the sales points are not only well stocked, they are also usually all active.
Ten sales points were open when the police swooped on Tuesday afternoon. Significant quantities of cocaine and heroin were indeed seized; twenty-one arrests were made.
The number of sales points is partly a consequence of the somewhat anarchic situation that now exists in Son Banya. As recent reports have pointed out, there aren’t the dominant clans there once were. The new generation is more independent. Gone in particular is the matriarch, ‘La Paca’.
Francisca Cortés Picazo is now 70 and is at the third grade (semi-liberty) of her most recent sentence. A fortnight or so ago, she insisted that she had only gone to Son Banya to take some clothes and food to her son. “Nothing more. I was terrified that they could get me into trouble. I will never go back to drugs.”
