Spanish police have made a record cocaine seizure after finding 13 metric tons of the drug hidden in a shipment of bananas in a container from Ecuador at the southern port of Algeciras.

The amount, discovered on October 14, beats the previous record in Spain when 9.4 tons of cocaine were found in 2023, also in Algeciras, Europe's fourth largest container port.

“It escapes no one's notice that these 13 tons of cocaine were not coming only to the Spanish market. The Spanish market cannot take on so many drugs all at once. This drug was coming to be distributed to the rest of Europe,” Antonio Jesus Martinez, head of the Central Narcotics Brigade of the National Police, told the press.

Spanish police were put on alert after receiving a tip-off from their counterparts in Ecuador, the world's largest exporter of bananas, that a suspicious shipment was on its way.

Martinez said police arrested a woman, a partner in the company receiving the shipment, although two managers of the importing company are on the run. 

This story was first published by Reuters