Marc is a telecommunications engineer and admits that he never thought his car would end up attacked by Kalashnikov fire. “I was in a police department and they thought we were from a rival gang,” he explains early one morning at a roadside bar. “You can imagine the shock.”
Marc, whose real name has been changed for security reasons, is responsible for Endesa’s fight against electricity fraud in Catalonia. He joined the company in 2016 without imagining that, nearly a decade later, much of his time would end up being spent fighting marijuana grows.
“The problem continues to grow,” he says, before recalling some data: 60% of electrical fraud linked to marijuana takes place on Catalan territory. In the first half of this year alone, Endesa and its subsidiaries disconnected 425 illegal connections that supplied the plantations: 16 such actions per week.
Collaboration between power companies and security forces has become essential to locate these crops. And Artificial Intelligence now plays an essential role in identifying points to investigate on the map.
“The arrival of big data “This allowed us to manage a lot of information that we did not know how to process,” continues this engineer. “We have more and more capacity to detect crops and we are working closely with the Mossos. »
Marc doesn’t want to give too much information, but he describes a network of sensors that provide data to the company, which developed its own software identify points to study.
The interview took place at seven in the morning, a few hours after having accompanied him in a large operation to dismantle an industrial marijuana crop: more than 3,000 plants distributed in eight premises occupying a large warehouse in Igualada (Barcelona) .
Excavations to capture the light
It’s a few minutes past six in the morning, the sun has not yet risen and two police officers armed with machine guns are guarding the door of a large industrial warehouse in this industrial area of Igualada. As soon as you enter, you can hear the murmur of the extractors and the smell of the thousands of plants growing inside and which have already been cut by around ten agents.
“It’s mining, Chinese stuff,” said an Endesa operator as he left the ship. Upon entering, we see the method used by drug traffickers to illegally connect to the electrical system: a hole almost two meters deep to directly access the electrical network.
The copper cables coming out of this joint are at high temperature and vibrate due to the intensity of the energy obtained. The expert report will ultimately show that the fraudulent electricity exceeds 600,000 kilowatts, the equivalent of the average consumption of around 200 homes.
“The crops are so industrialized and have such consumption that they represent a real danger for the neighbors,” explains one of the technicians, dressed in a helmet, boots and gloves. “There are risks of underground fires, electrocutions, power outages… And this also increases the bill for the rest of the customers.”
The assembly inside the ship is impressive. The facility has been divided into eight large growing rooms, each in a different phase: some rooms contain plants almost ready to be cut and dried. In other rooms, however, they are in an early phase of growth. A long corridor connects the different rooms, each with its own light box.
Large exhaust tubes run through the rooms and dozens of fans exhaust the air inside. The yellowish light of the projectors floods the place. The smell is so strong that some of the workers who cut the plants wear masks to avoid feeling dizzy.
Rise of mafias and human trafficking
Covered with a blanket, an Asian citizen who lived inside the culture observes the officers sitting in a chair. He appears disoriented and is currently the only detainee in the operation. Behind him is a refrigerator, a small kitchen, and the bed he slept on. These workers, the last link in the pyramid, are called “gardeners” and are sometimes victims of trafficking.
“He probably never left the ship,” says the head of the operation, who explains that some of these “gardeners” they intercept are exploited by mafias who take away their papers when they arrive in our country.
The strong smell, the heat of the floodlights and the hum of the fans and hoods make it difficult to think that it is possible to live there.
“Some don’t even know which country of the European Union they are in,” adds the agent. “They come here with promises of employment and end up being exploited by these networks.”
This mosso and Endesa technicians describe how the game has changed in recent years. The plantations are increasingly technical and exploited by more criminal profiles. “It is no longer rare to find firearms in these registers,” they explain.
Electricity company employees no longer travel without the police to check if there is an illegal connection. “They threatened me and tried to attack me several times,” explains one of the technicians. “I also found my car’s tires slashed.”
Before entering these ships, the Mossos must even ensure that there are no traps. “We found cultures in which there were guns that fired automatically as soon as someone entered,” says the registry official.
Among other reasons, those interviewed highlight that Catalonia has become “the European garden of marijuana” thanks to the large number of low-cost industrial warehouses well connected to the AP-7 highway, which connects the French border.
Joint operations every week
Participation in these operations has become routine for Endesa technicians. “Lately, we found ourselves in soup! », says an agent: this is the third plantation that they have dismantled in this region in a week.
Endesa employees know more and more about the phenomenon. Marc, for example, is clear about the hours of light that marijuana plants need, both during the growth and flowering phases. “I would tell you that today marijuana takes up 50% of my time,” he explains.
This engineer never thought he would be required to protect his identity and would regularly encounter police officers. “The year I started, we maybe did a hundred operations with the police,” he emphasizes. In 2023, there were more than 700.
Marc believes that this growth is attributable to “lax legislation” against cannabis cultivation and electrical fraud in Spain. This Monday, the general director of Endesa networks and those responsible for regulation of Iberdrola and Naturgy asked during an event to toughen the sanctions against this fraud and to align them with those of the rest of European countries.
All managers mentioned marijuana crops in their interventions. “It is not a question of small producers, but of increasingly violent gangs,” declared the leader of Endesa.
Other experts believe that the problem has become so serious because of prohibition and that only regulating the production and sale of cannabis would put an end to the accumulation of power of these mafias.
The Catalan police themselves suggested this in a confidential report that caused a sensation when it was leaked in the fall of 2021. However, last March the police prepared another document in which they called for harsher sanctions for growing marijuana.
Posted at the door of the warehouse which has just been intervened, a Mosso explains that, in this operation with around fifty agents, perhaps the only one who will end up being arrested will be the “gardener” and that the real Those responsible for this plantation could be arrested. get rid of it.
— Don’t you think they’re trying to open doors to the countryside?
— Probably yes, but what do you want to do to him? We’re just doing our job.
