Bloodshed on the Costa del Sol: How holiday hotspot is turning into underworld battleground with torture chambers and drive-by shootings as Spain sends in reinforcements

DAILYMAIL.COM • 1h ago

By SABRINA PENTY, FOREIGN NEWS REPORTER 11:36 04 Oct 2026, updated 11:37 04 Oct 2026

It was meant to be a peaceful evening on Malaga’s seafront.

The World Cup trophy that Spain won in July was on show at the famous Pompidou Centre, drawing locals and tourists to the port to take in the glory.

As the exhibition closed, families flocked out along the waterfront, settling in open-air restaurants to make the most of the last of Spain’s warm summer nights.

But what began as a relaxed evening by the sea, in a part of the world visited by millions of Brits each year, ended in chaos and bloodshed when gunshots rang out.

One man – a 47-year-old Turkish national – was shot in the face and remains in critical condition at a local hospital.

Witnesses described seeing two hooded figures storming into a restaurant before firing at the man and taking off.

The shooting on Tuesday evening is the fourth in the space of a month across the Costa del Sol and the latest example of increasing violence in the area.

The coastal region, which covers tourist hot-spots like Marbella, Estepona and Fuengirola, has emerged as a global hub for organised crime, with more than 100 mafia groups from around the world said to be operating along the 90-mile stretch of coastline.

These criminal networks are run by British, Irish, Swedish, Moroccan, Albanian and Colombian narco groups, who are partaking in an increasingly bloodthirsty battle for control, and leaving innocent bystanders to pay the price.

Ravaged by violent murders, robberies and drug deals, locals are growing increasingly anxious over the dangers these mafias pose.

Last month, a man was found dead near La Bajadilla marina in the upmarket town of Marbella.

The man, identified as a 33-year-old Senegalese national, was found with two bullet wounds to his abdomen.

While the incident pointed to gang violence, police said all possible motives remained open.

In their only official comment, the National Police said shortly after the incident: ‘The National Police have opened an investigation to clarify the homicide in Marbella of a 33-year-old man, found early on the morning of August 24 with two gunshot wounds to the abdominal area.

‘The victim was found dead around 2.20am in a public area, with the corresponding judicial protocol being activated after medical personnel confirmed the person’s death.

‘Officers assigned to the Specialised and Violent Crime Unit (UDEV) of the National Police Station in Marbella have taken charge of the investigation to fully clarify the facts.’

The murdered man was initially thought to have been the victim of a hit-and-run before it emerged he had been shot.

The man’s killing came just days after Rosa Ana Moron, the Chief Prosecutor of Spain’s Special Anti-Drug Prosecutor’s Office, warned that more resources, including specialised courts, were needed to fight against organised crime in southern Spain’s Andalucia region.

Andalucia’s president Juanma Moreno responded by saying on X: ‘A few days ago, the State Prosecutor General’s Office warned of this in its annual report, and now the chief anti-drug prosecutor of the National Court says it: drug trafficking is spreading in Andalusia and is a structural problem.

‘More resources are urgently needed. There must be a response from the central government now.’

Just two weeks later, police officers made a shocking discovery in nearby Estepona when they found a torture chamber used by an Eastern European gang.

On September 5, cops arrived at a property in the Spanish town after a woman alerted them that her partner may be in danger.

When they arrived at the house, a Moroccan man emerged covered in blood, telling police: ‘They want to kill us! They want to kill us!’

Officers called for reinforcements before entering the home and unveiling a sinister room where gang members appeared to be carrying out torture and abuse.

A police source told Spanish news outlet El Español: ‘There was a room lined with plastic sheeting. It was a torture room because it had tools like pliers and hammers.’

Another man – a Spanish national – was found tied to a chair and covered in blood, while cops seized two AK-47 assault rifles and several handguns.

Images from inside the house show a chair and walls covered in plastic so that blood could be removed without leaving any evidence behind.

The Moroccan man who fled the property was the partner of the woman who raised the alarm.

He had told his girlfriend he was going to a house for a work meeting but told her to call the police if she didn’t hear from him within 20 minutes.

After 40 minutes without any contact, the woman called the police.

Both men were naked, covered in blood and had visible injuries when rescued.

Police are now investigating why they were being tortured, and seven Georgian nationals believed to be linked to the property have been arrested.

Days after discovering the narco torture chamber, on September 8, a Dutch national was shot in broad daylight in the leg outside a hotel on Marbella’s Golden Mile.

Cops chased a vehicle along the coastal road and arrested two Danish nationals.

The victim was identified as a 48-year-old man, and the incident is believed to have been linked to a clash between rival gangs.

A police officer sustained a head injury during the high-speed chase.

And last week, a man was shot dead by Swedish hitmen after being mistaken for a gang member in one of the most tragic cases to rock the Costa del Sol region.

Last Friday, 20-year-old Nacho was gunned down in Malaga’s Barcenillas neighbourhood outside a supermarket.

The construction worker, who had no criminal record, was sitting on a bench near his home when three men shot him.

All three suspects were arrested in Malaga and Fuengirola and remanded in prison following their arrests soon after the shooting.

Nacho was shot in the leg and the back in the broad-daylight attack and managed to stagger to a nearby supermarket to ask for help.

He died later the same day after being admitted to a hospital intensive care unit.

Police confirmed in a statement: ‘About the murder in the Malaga shooting, the investigation is ongoing, but the initial hypothesis is that the victim was not linked to any kind of criminal organisation or drug trafficking.’

Sources said they believed Nacho could have been mistaken by his killers for a hitman from a rival gang about to target them because of the clothes he was wearing and a man bag he had on which they wrongly thought could have a weapon inside.

Friends said afterwards the victim ‘had an enormous heart’ as his mother Laura published an emotional open letter calling him a ‘great lover of animals’ and revealing his musical talent.

And on Monday this week police seized an astonishing array of weapons as well as drugs and masks from three Brits they arrested after raiding properties in Marbella.

Two of the suspects held in Marbella are minors whose exact ages have not been made public.

In a statement confirming the operation, Spain’s National Police said: ‘Officers have arrested three people in the town of Marbella, two of them minors, for their alleged involvement in trafficking synthetic drugs, who were found in possession of a total of five semi-automatic pistols, machetes, masks, silicone masks and other dangerous weapons.

‘The investigation began in July when a vehicle was located in Marbella, stolen in Portugal around that time and bearing cloned Swedish number plates, where officers found several weapons, large machetes, clown masks, silicone masks simulating human faces and other items of interest inside.

‘After various inquiries, investigators established that the vehicle was being used as a hiding place to conceal items and identified the alleged perpetrators.

‘Finally, two home searches were carried out, resulting in the arrest of three people, two of them minors, and the confiscation of the remaining items and drugs – 827 grams of Ketamine, 670 grams of 2CB also known as Tusi or pink cocaine, 52 grams of MDMA, 425 Ecstasy pills, and cash in different currencies.’

It is unclear how long the three British suspects had been in the area.

Officers say the adult has been remanded to a local jail pending an ongoing criminal probe, and the other two teenage minors have been sent to a juvenile detention centre.

Police this week were also investigating a shooting that took place in the early hours of September 20 in Alhaurin el Grande.

Cops raced to a rented property on the outskirts of the Spanish town after neighbours reported hearing gunshots.

Two people were injured and rushed to hospital.

Local newspaper Diario del Sur reported the shooting was linked to a narco gang trying to steal narcotics from a rival criminal group.

Spain’s Costa del Sol also experienced a massive surge of gang violence last year, sparking fears of a new turf war among gangs.

A 32-year-old Liverpudlian was gunned down in the middle of the street in Mijas on April 21, 2025.

The victim was already dead by the time police and paramedics reached the scene.

Locals told cops they had heard between eight and ten shots being fired. The incident has been described as a gunfight.

Two days later, a bound body of a man was found dumped in a ravine, also in Mijas, although authorities believe he had been dead for several days.

The corpse was found with a hood ‘over the head or next to it’ and had been partially burned, suggesting he had been tortured before he was killed. It is not yet confirmed whether the two cases are linked.

A week earlier, on Easter Thursday, a man was shot in the shoulder outside a nightclub in Marbella before the attackers fled the scene in a car. That same night, a man was stabbed in the stomach in another Marbella venue.

Hours later, a beach bar in Torremolinos was burned to the ground in a suspected arson attack.

On January 2, a German man of Arabic origin was shot in the anus and testicles as he exited the building.

Former Hells Angels member and ex-MMA fighter Saman Baghi, 34, allegedly ‘owed money to everyone’, resulting in him becoming a target.

The Mocro Maffia is one of the most feared and powerful gangs in Europe. It is estimated to generate €20billion per year in the Netherlands alone, according to Dutch investigator Pieter Tops.

They are just one of more than 100 mafias operating along the Costa del Sol, including the Italians, Colombians and Eastern Europeans.

But the newest kids on the block are the Albanians, according to police sources from UDYCO – a specialised task force created to tackle the scourge of drug trafficking.

Speaking to national newspaper La Razon last year, they said the Albanians are ‘fighting tooth and nail for the throne’ with the Mocro Maffia.

More alarmingly, teenage boys are allegedly being recruited by the Mocro Maffia to carry out such assassinations.

In November 2024, GRECO and UDYCO dismantled a cell in Alicante that recruited minors from Sweden and Denmark through a Telegram channel to commit murders and bomb attacks. The leader was a Swedish boy of Moroccan origin, aged just 14 years old.

A damning report by the Wall Street Journal recently revealed that drug gangs smuggling cocaine onto Spain’s southern coast now have the upper hand over authorities, with hundreds of drug boats operating in the Strait of Gibraltar.

The gangs are understood to use drones, radar and thermal imaging to track patrols and avoid them, while their boats can move at up to 70 miles per hour.

These organised crime groups are not only bringing in drugs, but also violence and unimaginable tragedy.

In 2026, a member of the Spanish Civil Guard died after two patrol boats collided while chasing a speedboat packed with drugs.

The case will finally head to court, with the Moroccan pilot of the narco boat to stand trial at the Cadiz provincial court on two counts of murder.

And in May this year, two more Civil Guard officers were killed and two others were injured about 80 miles off the coast of Huelva when their boats collided during a high-speed chase of smugglers.

That same month, authorities intercepted more than 30 tons off the Canary Islands, the largest single cocaine seizure ever recorded.

Following the recent spate of gangland violence on the Costa del Sol, Spain’s government has deployed police reinforcements to Malaga.

This week, Javier Salas, the Spanish government’s sub-delegate for Malaga, announced National Police reinforcements for the provincial capital.

He insisted that, despite admissions by high-level officials and opposition politicians, a lack of resources is hampering the fight against organised crime and drug trafficking, and gangs are becoming more and more violent: ‘Malaga is a safe province with crime rates declining year after year.

‘Locals and tourists can go about their activities with complete peace of mind.

‘In the last three years, 100 per cent of all incidents involving firearms have been solved by the National Police.

‘That doesn’t happen anywhere else in the world.’

But he went on to reveal that the so-called Plan Costa del Sol, a special law enforcement and security reinforcement initiative deployed by the Spanish government to combat organised crime, drug trafficking and firearm incidents in the province of Malaga, would be reinforced in the capital city ‘with more officers and a greater police presence’.

Mr Salas, speaking as Roberto Rodriguez was sworn in as the province’s new police chief, declined to say how many extra police officers would be drafted in as reinforcements.

Opposition politicians have become increasingly vocal about the Left-wing coalition central government’s handling of the Costa organised crime situation.

Speaking before Mr Salas’s announcement, Antonio Sanz, the Right-wing Andalucian region government’s vice-president, raged: ‘The Government has lost control of the fight against drug trafficking.’

He added: ‘We are increasingly moving towards a Ministry of Citizen Insecurity.’

Chief Commissioner Luis Esteban, head of the National Police in eastern Andalucia, said yesterday: ‘We are sitting on a ticking time bomb. We require more material and technical resources.’

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