Cocaine Cartels Turn Portugal’s Atlantic Waters into Floating Warehouses

Traffickers are quietly transforming the mid-Atlantic into a floating warehouse, and Portuguese investigators admit the new tactics put Lisbon, Faro, Madeira and even the Azores on the frontline of Europe’s cocaine surge. Senior officers meeting behind closed doors in the Algarve this week painted a picture of fleets of go-fast boats criss-crossing well beyond national waters, meeting semi-submersible craft, refuelling on hidden caches and delivering bales of high-grade powder to seemingly innocuous marinas.

Atlantic rendezvous beyond radar

Until recently the Algarve’s smugglers favoured a short sprint from North-African hashish beaches to the Iberian shoreline. Now, investigators say, the same skippers plot GPS points more than 100 nautical miles offshore to rendezvous with narco-submarines that left Colombia, Brazil or Venezuela weeks earlier. These spindle-shaped vessels run so low in the water that standard naval radar often loses them. Once the transfer is complete, the cocaine continues in fibreglass speedboats, each capable of 80 km/h and fitted with extra fuel bladders. According to the Judicial Police, some craft hug shipping lanes to mask their signature, others creep along the edges of Portuguese exclusive economic zones before darting for cover in the Ria Formosa, the Tagus estuary or the maze of Galician inlets across the border.

Numbers that set off alarms

Seizure data underscore the shift. In 2023 Portuguese forces confiscated 22 tonnes of cocaine; by 2024 the haul climbed to 23 tonnes – the highest since 2006. Mid-way through 2025, the tally has already hit 9.5 tonnes in 919 separate cases, with a single October action, "Operação Galgo", removing 2.3 tonnes from circulation. The EU’s drugs agency now labels Portugal a top-three “entry gateway”, a status reflected in 419 tonnes of cocaine intercepted across Europe last year, a seventh consecutive record. Officers trace the bulk of Portuguese seizures to the Colombia-Portugal corridor, followed by consignments moving through West Africa and the Canary archipelago.

Technology and the cat-and-mouse escalator

Behind every high-profile bust sits an arsenal of sensors: P-3 Orion patrols, satellite AIS sweeps, electro-optical drones launched from Portuguese Navy corvettes and, increasingly, artificial-intelligence models pooling data inside the MAOC-N headquarters in Lisbon. Yet traffickers answer with their own upgrades—low-visibility paint, radar-absorbing foams, detachable fuel tanks and disposable GPS boxes that self-erase once a delivery is made. New legislation published in October criminalises possession of go-fast hulls lacking customs permits and bans electronic counter-measures designed to fool coast-guard tracking.

Iberian partnership and global reach

The Algarve meeting illustrated how bilateral patrols with Spain, long limited to the Guadiana River and the Bay of Cádiz, now extend deep into international waters with support from French, US and Brazilian naval assets. A February accord in Brasília commits both sides to share live intelligence on PCC-linked cells believed to manage logistics in Setúbal and Leixões. Meanwhile, analysts credit joint EU-funded missions with the interception of 77 tonnes of cocaine between January and October 2025 alone. Recent arrests span Trinidad and Tobago, Senegal, Réunion and Nord-Pas-de-Calais, reflecting the multi-continental loops the cartels exploit when Portuguese inspection of container terminals tightens.

Why it matters at home

Skirmishes on the high seas rarely make front-page news, yet the ripple effects land quickly onshore: street-level purity has risen, forcing treatment centres from Porto to Faro to recalibrate overdose protocols; police in Setúbal attribute a spike in gang-related shootings to turf wars over new distribution lines; customs inspectors fear that every success at sea pushes traffickers toward smaller, less-protected ports such as Viana do Castelo or Sines. Lawmakers will shortly debate a strategic plan coupling tougher maritime controls with community-level prevention, hoping to prevent the Atlantic’s new trafficking super-highway from undermining Portugal’s hard-won reputation for pragmatic drug policy.