Dilip Kuner
RESIDENTS in La Linea have slammed a new Netflix documentary on the dark underbelly of drug trafficking in the area saying it ‘does not reflect the reality of this city of honest workers’.
Locals believe the controversial show, announced by Netflix last week, would destroy ‘the economy and the possibility of any type of tourism’ in the area.
The documentary miniseries, La Linea: The Shadow of the Narco, will air later this year.
According to the streaming giant, the production team conducted 81 interviews and has 336 hours of recording ‘to tell the day-to-day of the conflict in one of the largest enclaves in the country’.
But locals have responded in fury at the series, saying they were ‘fed up’ of La Linea being shown as a city of ‘drug trafficking, debauchery and banditry’.
A Change.org petition demanding that the show be removed from the platform has reached nearly 1,000 signatures.
The Olive Press recently reported on a sprawling luxury urbanisation built by and for drug mafias near the border of Gibraltar.
Dubbed Narcoville, the dozens of homes in the El Zabal area of La Linea de la Concepcion have been constructed on protected agricultural land.
The homes have no numbers and are surrounded by metres-high walls, making them only visible from the air.
Covering four square kilometres, the mostly illegal homes come equipped with high tech cameras keeping an eye on who is passing by, with police and journalists among the most regular visitors.
It was revealed an Algeciras musician used the home of a drug smuggler as the setting for a music video released last year.
Flamenco reggaeton star Canelita released the video 10 months ago and it has got ten million hits.
It was filmed in the home of drug clan leader Jesus Heredia, who was recently arrested in a drug raids.
There are now several urbanisations containing up to 10 homes each, all of them built with cash earned from the smuggling of tobacco or drugs, police claim.
Policia Nacional have been slowly chipping away at the homes, working with environmental prosecutors to not only prove they are built on protected land, but that drug trafficking profits have been used to build them.
In two recently raided houses, officers from the Economic and Fiscal Crime Unit (Udef) and the Drugs and Organised Crime Unit (Udyco), discovered large amounts of hidden narcotics.
