Avenida del Albir smells of saltpeter and marinated herring. There is brunost in the supermarket, that curious brown Norwegian cheese. There are also bags of salmiakki, the Finnish salty liquorice. A blond man walks with a bunad accompanied by two others in T-shirts. The three of them are sweating buckets. Even a dental clinic has its sign in Swedish, but it is not a residential neighborhood in Oslo or Stockholm, it is L’Alfàs del Pi. It is an Alicante enclave of 20,000 inhabitants that operates as a Viking base, the twelfth Norwegian county, under the harsh sun of the Mediterranean.
A demographic delirium. The National Statistics Institute marks little more than 21,000 inhabitantsbut almost 30% of the census comes from Norway. Let’s add another 20% between Finns, Swedes and Danes. Official figures fluctuate depending on the season: many residents do not register their municipal register for tax reasons (there are only about 2,5000 registered Norwegians). However, visual reality does not lie. There are runes and several shop windows of local real estate agencies that ignore the euro and value villas directly in crowns. On the Costa Blanca.
And here May 17 is celebrated with devotion. Because this day is celebrated as Norwegian Constitution Day. The party paralyzes the town and thousands of people parade through the central streets. Blonde children wave their flags and marching bands play the national anthem. The Spanish mayor, Vicente Arques Cortés, politician and educational psychologist, delivers institutional speeches in perfect Norwegian. Without them, “there would only be olive trees, almond trees and goats,” resume in which is, along with London, the largest colony of Nordic subjects on the planet.
A diplomatic link of eight centuries. Already in the 13th century, King Haakon Haakonsson ‘the Elder’ traveled to Spain to marry his daughter to Philip, infant of Castile, fifth son of Ferdinand III and brother of King Alfonso X the Wise. According to the story, in the end the princess fell prey to melancholy for living so far from her birth home. His remains lie in the Collegiate Church of San Cosme and San Damián de Covarrubias, which gives rise to the pilgrimage route of San Olav.
That marriage sealed one of the first great diplomatic ties between the Scandinavian kingdoms and the Iberian Peninsula. Princess Christina of Norway never adapted to the climate, the language or a Castilian court radically different from the fjords where she had grown up. He died just four years after arriving in Castilla, at only 28 years old. Their pain sealed a relationship that there will be those who consider began with the retirees of the Costa Blanca.
Mafias and violence. In return, the event pages of L’Alfàs del Pi have a separate space. Because, apparently, they don’t just import peaceful retirees, they also attract outright terror. In this small Scandinavia, the Swedish and Norwegian mafia clans control a good part of the European drug trafficking from here. It has been known for a decade that clubs like Den Norske Klubb They are “problematic”. The bikers of Hells Angels They established operational bases in Alicante years ago and control a good part of the nightlife. Million-dollar money laundering schemes are still being investigated.
To the recent news of sale of vapers for minors or the 17 people arrested by a criminal gang that stole jewelry at gunpoint is added to all that hashish that arrives in speedboats from Morocco, or the cocaine that enters through the ports of Valencia and Algeciras. Scandinavian organizations buy merchandise on Alicante soil. They then send it to northern Europe through complex logistics networks.
Live and die without speaking Spanish. He Europol Report (SOCTA – Serious and Organized Crime Threat Assessment analyzes the expansion of Scandinavian criminal networks in southern Europe and concludes that “drastic measures” are required. Organized crime brings fresh blood and settling of scores. And the Home Office has published several crime balances of the UDYCO (Drugs and Organized Crime Unit) on this social problem.
The Norwegian Costa Blanca Club, the Norwegian school, the monumental Protestant church and other services have been established so that the Norwegian resident can live comfortably without needing to pronounce a single word of Spanish, as happens in Fuengirola with the FinnsTorrevieja with its concentration of Russians and Ukrainians u Orihuela with the thousands of british that houses
An oasis for good and bad. The vast majority of Norwegian residents are part of a community that has been settled for decades. Movies like ‘Luger‘ (2025) flirt with an idea that too often is just pure xenophobia. They have cultural associations such as the Volunteer Center-Frivilling, schools funded by Norway, sports clubs, press in their language, specialized shops and social life that has disrupted the local economy. The heat, and not only that of the sun but that of coexistence, explains why the municipality continues to be a reference for Scandinavian emigration in the Mediterranean. However, the municipality is also a victim of that other side.
Local agents, for example, collaborate daily with Kripos, the Norwegian national police, which has already uncovered cases such as the network that operated paying with monero tokens. The Nordic noir, not as cold, but just as calculated in the palm-lined streets of L’Alfàs del Pi. Over the past few years, police helicopters have mapped the thermal signatures of the crypto mining farmsused to finance crime. How are you happening now to Belgiumthe Alicante networks served for the heyday of EncroChat (2020) and Sky ECC (2021), two networks from which European mafias moved with more than 800 criminals involved.
Images | EFE/Pablo Miranzo
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