The Civil Guard agents who stormed the merchant ship Arconian on the high seas encountered six heavily armed men, according to sources familiar with the operation. The cargo ship, which arrived this Sunday in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, was carrying a giant cocaine shipment that is still being weighed this Monday and has not yet been precisely quantified.
Read more The first electoral debate in Andalusia | The five main candidates face off
During this Monday, part of the 23 detainees, mostly of Filipino and Dutch nationality, have been transferred ashore and the vessel has been searched. The agents have seized at least three rifles and three semi-automatic pistols.
The drugs were hidden behind a metal wall sealed by welds. It seemed as if there was nothing behind it, that the ship ended there, the same sources indicate. Behind that partition, an unquantified number of bales was found, although some sources suggest there may be approximately 1,500. According to these estimates and pending the judicial weighing to provide concrete figures, the merchant ship could be carrying more than 30 tons of drugs, which would be a record figure in the fight against drug trafficking. One of the images of the area where the drug packages were found shows a narrow and elongated space with a large number of irregularly stacked bundles. The bales are white, black, or silver and are tied with tape or ropes. Pipes, cables, and ducts can be seen on the ceiling.
Since the cargo ship arrived in Las Palmas, the agents have been working on examining the interior of the vessel and analyzing these bundles to verify if they indeed contain cocaine and to determine their weight, which will be essential to provide a real figure of the shipment. The need to maintain the chain of custody of the shipment at all times is slowing down the process. The case, which is under secrecy, is in the hands of the National Court.
The operation, led by the Central Operative Unit of the Civil Guard (UCO), has mobilized agents specialized in high-risk situations, such as the Special Intervention Unit (UEI), whose agents were responsible for entering and securing the ship. Moments of tension were experienced during the assault, according to consulted sources. The images known so far of the operation show at least six weapons, three rifles, and three semi-automatic pistols. The latter had blue ropes or cords tied to the stock and barrel of the weapon, as if they were improvised straps for the carrier to hang the weapon and thus be able to hold it for long periods. The Unified Association of the Civil Guard (AUGC) has described the intervention as a “historic blow to drug trafficking” and has shared images of the weapons seized on board on its X social media profile.
🚨 HISTORIC BLOW TO DRUG TRAFFICKING
Images that speak for themselves: intervention on the high seas, detainees in custody, and a war arsenal seized on board.
The Civil Guard intercepts a cargo ship with a cocaine shipment that could set a record in Spain.
This is the… pic.twitter.com/nYRE2jNEmbRead more Sheinbaum gives the green light to an ambitious plan to boost mixed and private investments
— AUGC Guardia Civil 🇪🇸 (@AUGC_Comunica) May 4, 2026
The oceanic ship Duque de Ahumada, with a crew of 25 people, and a Navy patrol boat have also been mobilized for this operation.
The Arconian is a medium-sized cargo ship that had departed from Sierra Leone on April 22 and was destined for Benghazi, Libya. It sailed under a flag of convenience from Comoros, an archipelago in southeast Africa located off the coast of Mozambique that offers lax legislation exploited by shipowners. It was intercepted off the coast of Dajla (the former Villa Cisneros), a city in Western Sahara.
Ships transporting large cocaine shipments usually transfer the cargo at sea to drug speedboats, which make increasingly longer trips to land. The fact that these transfers are made at sea has led to earlier interventions of ships loaded with narcotics to prevent the drugs from spreading and making it much more difficult to arrest those involved.
The largest cocaine shipment seized in Spain in a single operation reached 13 tons. The drugs were located at the Port of Algeciras in October 2024 and arrived in Spain hidden in a container from Ecuador destined for Alicante. They were concealed among a load of bananas. At the beginning of 2026, the Police seized 9,994 kilos of cocaine at sea, almost 10 tons. This seizure is so far the largest cocaine apprehension in water in the history of this police force and the largest among European police forces, according to sources from the investigation.
Read more Iran opens fire in response to the United States’ attempt to remove ships from the Strait of Hormuz