Organized Crime and Illicit Activities in Spain: Causes and Facilitating Factors

Abstract

Spain is not a country that we traditionally associate with organized crime, yet this article will show that there are a myriad of organized crime groups active there, engaging in a whole range of illicit activities. Therefore, after having demonstrated the scale and severity of the problem, the article will consider, assess and analyze the factors that facilitate it. Fundamentally, the article will argue that, although Spain possesses a number of characteristics that make it an ideal environment for these kinds of groups and activities, we should also consider various weaknesses and inefficiencies that are present in some of Spain's institutions and systems, if we are to gain a more comprehensive understanding of why organized crime is so prolific there.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Professor Bradford Dillman for his useful suggestions and comments on an earlier version of this article.

Notes

¹ This figure incorporates groups that had been investigated by some police unit and/or for which the police had obtained some kind of result. I am grateful to members of the Spanish Judicial Police for allowing me access to this report, which is not generally publicly available (but it is accessible to the press). NB: some press reports give the total figure of organized crime groups active in Spain in 2005 as 480 (see, for example Barbería, 2006).

² This is the focus of my doctoral research, currently being undertaken in the School of Politics and International Studies, University of Leeds, UK.

³ This fact has certainly also become very clear to me during interviews and meetings with National Police and Civil Guard personnel during fieldwork undertaken for my doctoral research during 2006–07.