explained that his police station confiscated literally tons of hash every year and it was supposed to be burned in an incinerator each month. But he said that it was never closely checked and it was easy to steal huge lumps without anyone noticing. I was obviously wary at first but this cop proved to be as good as gold when he turned up as promised at a pre-arranged rendezvous with a brick of the best hash I had ever come across!’
However, Barny remains convinced he is treading a dangerous path if he stays in the hash game for too long. ‘I’ve noticed that the dealers who are clever never stay in this profession for too long. They say that once you start thinking about stopping you should quit immediately because if your head goes, then you start making mistakes and once you do that you’re basically fucked and something bad will happen to you sooner or later.’
Barny mentions the case of another smalltime dealer working on the perimeter of Barny’s ‘territory’ who ended up getting ‘a very brutal lesson’. ‘This guy bought a load of hash off an Albanian who I have always managed to avoid,thank God. Anyway my mate didn’t have the full amount of cash required when he took a delivery of this guy’s hash but then the stupid idiot forgot to pay up when he next saw the Albanian. A few days later a man with a gun knocked on my mate’s door and when he answered he got the bullet – literally. He wasn’t killed but he hasn’t had a job of any kind ever since.’
But the most harrowing anecdote of all from Barny came when he told how another young dealer he knows lost a shipment of hash that he was handling for a major criminal. ‘They tracked down this young dealer, smashed the front door down of his flat and when he said he couldn’t pay for the lost shipment they hauled him off to a gay brothel in Estepona and forced him to work off his debt. In the end the guy did a runner and the last I heard of him he was somewhere in northern Spain working for a really nasty gang of Colombians.’
So how is Barny ever going to escape the clutches of the hash trade? He explains: ‘I’ve saved up a lot of cash and when the moment is right I will make the move. I know it has to be sooner rather than later otherwise I could end up in the same shallow grave as a few of the other dealers round here.’
Barny’s story is both sad and revealing. He has used hash to survive but, ultimately, he is more a victim than a criminal and he longs for a life of normality and happiness like everyone else.
CHAPTER 8
INSIDE SPAIN’S ‘HASH CENTRAL’
Alhaurín de la Torre Penitentiary, near Málaga, on the Costa del Sol, is renowned as Spain’s most overcrowded prison with more than 2,000 inmates. It’s designed to house only 900 prisoners. It also happens to contain more hash offenders than probably any other jail in the world.
Attacks against prison guards and among the inmates are infrequent because the regime is relaxed in many ways. Many inmates have mobile phones and it’s said that all the staff are bribable, if the price is right.
However, my visit to Alhaurín coincided with the discovery of the body of a twenty-one-year-old prisoner in his cell, who’d swallowed more than a dozen capsules of hash. His cellmate reported that the youth was ill and lying on the cell floor. He died a short while later.
The dead man had only been in Alhaurín for forty-eight hours but he’d swallowed the hash while being transferredfrom Puerto III prison in Cadiz in order to make a court appearance in nearby Melilla. Word on the prison corridors was that the man had been given the hash to swallow by a guard.
Alhaurín prison is certainly a foul-smelling hole of a place. The waft of sweat, fear and loathing hits you in the face the moment you walk through the gates, despite the pungent aroma of disinfectant. Everything is off-white in colour, from the faces of the deadpan guards to the chipped walls and the yellowing metalwork of
However, Barny remains convinced he is treading a dangerous path if he stays in the hash game for too long. ‘I’ve noticed that the dealers who are clever never stay in this profession for too long. They say that once you start thinking about stopping you should quit immediately because if your head goes, then you start making mistakes and once you do that you’re basically fucked and something bad will happen to you sooner or later.’
Barny mentions the case of another smalltime dealer working on the perimeter of Barny’s ‘territory’ who ended up getting ‘a very brutal lesson’. ‘This guy bought a load of hash off an Albanian who I have always managed to avoid,thank God. Anyway my mate didn’t have the full amount of cash required when he took a delivery of this guy’s hash but then the stupid idiot forgot to pay up when he next saw the Albanian. A few days later a man with a gun knocked on my mate’s door and when he answered he got the bullet – literally. He wasn’t killed but he hasn’t had a job of any kind ever since.’
But the most harrowing anecdote of all from Barny came when he told how another young dealer he knows lost a shipment of hash that he was handling for a major criminal. ‘They tracked down this young dealer, smashed the front door down of his flat and when he said he couldn’t pay for the lost shipment they hauled him off to a gay brothel in Estepona and forced him to work off his debt. In the end the guy did a runner and the last I heard of him he was somewhere in northern Spain working for a really nasty gang of Colombians.’
So how is Barny ever going to escape the clutches of the hash trade? He explains: ‘I’ve saved up a lot of cash and when the moment is right I will make the move. I know it has to be sooner rather than later otherwise I could end up in the same shallow grave as a few of the other dealers round here.’
Barny’s story is both sad and revealing. He has used hash to survive but, ultimately, he is more a victim than a criminal and he longs for a life of normality and happiness like everyone else.
CHAPTER 8
INSIDE SPAIN’S ‘HASH CENTRAL’
Alhaurín de la Torre Penitentiary, near Málaga, on the Costa del Sol, is renowned as Spain’s most overcrowded prison with more than 2,000 inmates. It’s designed to house only 900 prisoners. It also happens to contain more hash offenders than probably any other jail in the world.
Attacks against prison guards and among the inmates are infrequent because the regime is relaxed in many ways. Many inmates have mobile phones and it’s said that all the staff are bribable, if the price is right.
However, my visit to Alhaurín coincided with the discovery of the body of a twenty-one-year-old prisoner in his cell, who’d swallowed more than a dozen capsules of hash. His cellmate reported that the youth was ill and lying on the cell floor. He died a short while later.
The dead man had only been in Alhaurín for forty-eight hours but he’d swallowed the hash while being transferredfrom Puerto III prison in Cadiz in order to make a court appearance in nearby Melilla. Word on the prison corridors was that the man had been given the hash to swallow by a guard.
Alhaurín prison is certainly a foul-smelling hole of a place. The waft of sweat, fear and loathing hits you in the face the moment you walk through the gates, despite the pungent aroma of disinfectant. Everything is off-white in colour, from the faces of the deadpan guards to the chipped walls and the yellowing metalwork of
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