Operacion Dragon Site

Operación Dragón was not a lucky break. It was a two-year infiltration.

The operation’s masterstroke was electronic. Spanish agents, with help from the US DEA and the UK’s SOCA, managed to jam the clan’s satellite phone system. For 48 hours before the Punta Candieira docked, the bosses in their luxury villas in A Illa de Arousa heard only static. They couldn’t warn the crew that the port was surrounded. Operacion Dragon

This was the final strike of , the largest anti-narcotics operation in Spanish history up to that point. Operación Dragón was not a lucky break

On a foggy November morning in 2005, a commercial fishing trawler named Punta Candieira slipped into the port of Vigo, Spain. To the dockworkers, it was just another vessel returning from a long, fruitless haul in the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. The crew looked exhausted; the nets were clean. But the Spanish Civil Guard had been waiting for this ship for six months. Spanish agents, with help from the US DEA

The name was chosen deliberately. In Chinese and Western mythology, the dragon guards a great treasure. For the Galician clans, their treasure was the cocaine route. For the Civil Guard, the dragon was the clan itself—ancient, powerful, and breathing fire. The operation was the knight’s charge.

The operation dismantled the "Galician connection." The heads of the Charlines clan were sentenced to over 18 years in prison. The Punta Candieira was seized and later used by the Spanish government as a training ship for anti-drug officers.