The largest drug lab outside of South America capable of producing 200kg of cocaine every single day was raided during a joint operation by Spanish and Colombian police.
The lab in Cerdedo-Cotobad, in the province of Pontevedra, Galicia, produced raw paste for cocaine and police found nearly one-and-a-half tonnes of it during the bust.
The lab – set up by Colombian and Mexican cartels – was so busy it had day and night shifts of chemists, technicians and packers.
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Police seized 18 suspects in a series of raids across Spain and the Canary Islands earlier this month.
“The mega-laboratory, located in Pontevedra province, never paused its activities, with its ‘cooks’ working in shifts 24 hours a day to transform the base paste into cocaine hydrochloride ready for consumption,” the Policía Nacional said in a statement.
“The now-dismantled criminal organisation was highly sophisticated and its members – whose different duties were well organised – employed strong security measures, such as using aliases, decoy vehicles, disguising themselves as truckers, and using a strict communications protocol.”
Among those arrested were six Colombians and two Mexicans who worked in semi-slavery conditions, according to the police.
They also confiscated 1,300 kilogrammes (2,866 lbs) of cocaine paste, the largest-ever seizure outside South America.
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The paste had been trafficked into Spain, hidden in large stone-crushing machines.
Police further seized 151 kilogrammes (333 lbs) of cocaine ready to sell and 23,000 litres of chemicals used to process the paste into the drug.
Police also locked down 17 properties worth an estimated EUR 1.7 million and seized cars, jewellery and cash.
Official video footage of the raid shows two huge vats where the raw paste was cooked and hundreds of packets of drugs marked with Superman 'S' labels.
Astonishingly, police say they stumbled across the lab while they were watching two suspects in the Canary Islands who have Colombian connections.
Tracking them led investigators to the factory on mainland Spain and a storage unit near Madrid.
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