This was the final strike of , the largest anti-narcotics operation in Spanish history up to that point.
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. Operacion Dragon
The Civil Guard knew they couldn't beat the clans at sea, so they beat them on land. Using wiretaps and a paid informant inside the Charlines organization, agents learned the critical detail: the clans were moving away from heroin to cocaine, and they had bought a state-of-the-art freezer trawler. This was the final strike of , the
Today, while smaller clans still operate, Operación Dragón broke the back of the industrial-scale "fishing" model. It forced the cartels to shift their routes north toward the Netherlands and Belgium. However, the case remains a landmark in European criminology: a rare example of law enforcement destroying a logistical network without firing a single shot, using patience, technology, and the oldest weapon in the book—an informant who wanted a reduced sentence. For the Galician clans, their treasure was the cocaine route