Coca has dropped so much in price that the cartels are recycling their submarines

He price crash of cocaine is affecting the modus operandi of drug traffickers. And in a peculiar way. Guardian has revealedciting sources from the National Police, that the cartels are doing something difficult to see until not so long ago: they recycle their narco-submarines. Instead of sinking them after drug dumps, they try to get the most out of them, even setting up “resupply platforms” in the middle of the ocean to reuse them.

Being a drug trafficker is no longer what it used to be.

What has happened? The drug business may be a peculiar business for obvious reasons (it operates outside the law), but deep down it is governed by the same guidelines as any other market: supply, demand, costs and the search for profitability. Hence before the collapse of prices in the wholesale cocaine market, drug traffickers have looked for new ways to guarantee their profit margin.

One of those strategies revealed it a few days ago the British newspaper Guardian: Instead of sinking their narco-submarines in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean after unloading merchandise, the cartels have begun to reuse them.

How to reuse them? Alberto Morales, head of the central narcotics brigade of the National Police, explains it clearly: until now the normal thing was for these rudimentary semi-submersibles to cover specific routes, such as one-way trips to the Canary Islands. Once there, they unloaded their valuable merchandise and then sank to cover their tracks. There is even speculation about the existence of “narcosubmarine cemeteries” in the Atlantic, between the Canary Islands and the Azores.

After all, building each of these submersible vehicles cost 600,000 euros. It may seem like a lot of money, but it paid for itself thanks to its ability to move large loads of bales, at least three or four tons. The kilo of coca was paid at a good price, so it paid off.

And now? Now, with prices falling, things are different, confirms Morales. “Instead of sinking them, what they do is unload the cargo and set up a resupply platform at sea so that the submarines can return to their countries of origin and make as many trips as possible.”

It is not a capricious change. The ‘recycling’ of narco-submarines comes in a very specific context, marked by the price crash of the kilo of coca and an increase in the use of submersibles, one of the options that the cartels have on the table to transport their stashes between both points of the Atlantic.

Are they used that much? It seems so. Guardian remember that, although semi-submersibles have long been used in South and Central America, where their history can date back as far as the 1980s, they were not recorded in European waters until relatively recently. In 2019 Interior boasted having intercepted in Galicia “the first ‘narco-submarine’ detected in Europe”, although there are news from 2006 who already talk about the discovery of submersibles.

The truth is that in just 20 years, narco-submarines have gone from being almost unknown to more or less popular tools. During this time the police have detected or seized a dozen, so it is not unreasonable to think that many others have successfully robbed the 8,000 km of coast Spanish.

Why do they use them? “We are observing a lot of narco-submarine activity because it is the most profitable system for organizations. The investment is less and the chances of the drug reaching its destination are greater, so the fight is constant,” confirm to The Country Emilio Rodríguez Ramos, from the CREGO organized crime response unit of the National Police in Pontevedra.

In 2019, the authorities managed to seize a submersible with three tons of cocaine and since then they have intercepted three others, two already unloaded.

But… Why? The increase in the use of narco-submarines is not the only trend confirmed by the authorities, who have been perceiving a clear increase in coca seizures for years. According to the data it handles GuardianIn 2022, the police and Customs intercepted about 58 tons of white powder, in 2023 there were already 118 and last year they reached 123 tons.

“There is more cocaine than ever,” recently recognized em The Newspaper another police spokesperson when talking about the situation in Barcelona. If there is supply it is (evidently) because there is demand: the European Drugs Report of 2025 corroborates that ours is the country with the highest percentage of the population that has ever tried coca: 13.3%, significantly higher than France or Denmark.

And the price? That’s the other key. In recent years the price of coca (at least in the wholesale market, another thing is the street) has collapsed to historical levels, until leaving the kilo at 13,000 euros. It is very little if you take into account that not so long ago that same amount was quoted at 30,000. In fact until at least a few months ago the reference with which Interior worked to calculate the value of the seized caches, set a kilo of coca at more than 30,500 euros.

Behind this ‘pinch’ in prices there are several factors: there are those who speak of the impact on the market of the surplus of coca accumulated during the pandemic and those who point to the effects of the peace agreement reached in 2016 between the State of Colombia and the guerrilla. The pact freed hectares of jungle for cultivation, to which was added the decision of the Government to retire aerial fumigation of plantations with glyphosate due to its environmental impact.

Images | Coast Guard (Flickr), Ministry of the Interior 1 and 2 and Ministry of Defense of Peru (Flickr)

In Xataka | In 2001, a yacht took refuge on a remote island in the Atlantic. Days later its inhabitants breaded fish with coca