Since his conditional release from prison in 2016, Sito Minanco had reportedly ditched his past as one of Spain's most powerful drug barons to work as a parking attendant. But this week, the 62-year-old - whose real name is Jose Ramon Prado Bugallo - was re-arrested on suspicion of trying to impose himself once again in the lucrative cocaine trade, along with 20 alleged members of his suspected network in a nationwide sting.
Minanco is from Galicia, a region in Spain's northwest whose rugged coastline has proved ideal for trafficking with narrow waterways that wind in-land, once at the forefront of the illegal drug trade. He was arrested on Monday in the southern city of Algeciras, where he worked as a parking attendant but lived in a villa with a pool.
His alleged right-hand man Enrique Garcia Arango, a Colombian, was also held, along with the son-in-law of a major Galician hashish trafficker. On Friday, police announced close to five tonnes of drugs had been seized in the operation.
Four people, including two elite police officers, were injured during the detentions.
He "could be the most powerful drug trafficker ever in Galicia, and Spain," says Nacho Carretero, an investigative journalist who wrote a book on cocaine trafficking in the region. "He is often compared to Pablo Escobar (the late drug lord) because just like the Colombian, Sito Minanco was always a man who managed his social relations well, a man who looked after people who worked with him, who nurtured his image among neighbours."
Minanco owned a shipyard in Galicia which he is accused of using as a cover to bring in drugs, a police source, who refused to be named, told AFP. The source said his vessels would meet with boats at sea coming from Latin America, particularly Colombia, to allegedly collect cocaine and bring it to Europe.
"The operations that Sito Minanco oversaw never involved anything under 4,000 kilos of cocaine," says Carretero, of which he would take a 30 or 40 percent cut.
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