diver
Well-Known Member
it's a gripping read, very well-researched not your cheesy Dyer/Ritchie yarns. Basically, tourists were getting ripped off and pressured into signing up to properties that often didn't even exist. The people behind the racket made millions. The spanish cops were bribed and kept their noses out. there were Colombians, African diamond smugglers, Hezbollah terrorists, Putin's mafia pals and London crime lords all tearing strips out of each other with machetes and guns. there was even a drag queen going round with a baseball bat demanding protection money! It only really cleaned up when the Spanish taxman and Judge Garzon who investigated Pinochet started sniffing around. Tourists wouldn't realise it today but a lot of the americas resort was an actual warzone
I concur with this. I know of a couple of well known faces from Glasgow who were about to be banged up in the UK for heroin trafficking legged it over there and set up. Made absolute fortunes until one of them was mutilated by South Americans who were muscling in at the time. Other one owns a golf course I believe on the Costa del Sol now.
I've not been in years to be fair but it always had an edge to it, whether or not it still does I don't know.
I watched a great documentary maybe 10-15 years ago that showed a mixed race (Oriental/White-British) scouse girl who ran a takeaway or similar. She dished some dirt but when push came to shove, she would only insinuate that it was the Police running the gaf.