With only 49 million inhabitants, Spain ranks 31st as one of the world’s most populous countries, but more recently, it has been ranked among the world leaders in cocaine consumption, according to a BBC Mundo report. From population surveys to wastewater analysis and seizures, several international studies grant the Iberian kingdom the infamous honour of being among the main markets for the white powder. Cocaine was once known as white gold because of the riches it made for drug traffickers like Pablo Escobar Gaviria, the Colombian cartel boss who, before his death, was the world’s most powerful and wealthiest criminal. But the question is, why does it have such great appeal among people in Spain? Spain leads EU in cocaine use According to the 2025 European Drug Report, 13.3 per cent of Spaniards between the ages of 15 and 64 have used cocaine at least once in their lives, the highest figure in the EU, above the 9.4 pèr cent in France and Denmark, and the 8 per cent in the Netherlands. Outside the European Union (EU), the United Kingdom, Australia, and the United States tend to join Spain in the rankings of the largest consumers of this drug. And consumption worldwide, not just in Spain, is on the rise, and there’s no more unambiguous indication than the growth of its production in Colombia, where in 2024, 1,000 more tones were manufactured, yielding the country a supply worth $66.6 billion at the wholesale price of $25,000 per kilogram, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. On a side note, but a fascinating fact, is that in many locations across Colombia, cocaine and cocaine paste are used as a currency for the purchase of food, clothes, properties, vehicles and more. Only Belgium has higher seizure numbers According to a BBC report, Spanish police seized some 118 tons of cocaine in 2023, more than a quarter of the 419 tons seized across the EU and second only to the 123 tons seized in Belgium, which concentrates much of its trafficking in the strategic port of Antwerp. The report adds that in Spain, cocaine is responsible for 60 per cent of drug-related deaths and half of overdose deaths. Those figures are twice the European average, the BBC noted. “There is rampant cocaine use in this country that is going unreported, and it’s already surpassing pre-recession record levels,” said journalist and writer David López Canales, author of the essay “A Little Line? Why is so much cocaine used in Spain and not talked about?” So, how did it happen? How did Spain become one of the world’s largest consumers of cocaine? And why has a portion of Spanish society normalised this highly addictive and potentially deadly substance? Victor Mendes, a journalist specialising in drug routes and founder of the Narcodiario website, has the answer. “After the rise of this substance in the 1970s in the United States, with Miami as the world capital, cocaine spread to Spain and Europe,” he said. Galicia became the main entry point for cocaine into Europe, Mendez added. With its intricate geography of deep estuaries, hidden coves, rugged coastlines, and an extensive network of small islands and cliffs, the Galician coast was just right for maritime smugglers, who began with tobacco and moved on to the more lucrative cocaine business in the early 1980s. “When penalties for smuggling tobacco were toughened in 1982, they switched to hashish and, especially, cocaine. If the penalties were the same, they preferred to traffic in what brought in more money,” Méndez stated. Spain, the cocaine gateway to Europe Colombian cocaine bosses saw this as an opportunity to use Spain as their distribution gateway to the rest of Europe. Incredibly, the routes established back then are still active today, Mendez said. In the early years, cocaine in Spain was neither accessible nor familiar, and was only consumed in specific environments as a symbol of status, success, or transgression. Its reputation was that of a sophisticated, expensive, and exclusive drug that circulated only in the elite circles of society, satisfying the aspirations of businessmen, bankers, and artists. Today, that is no longer true. Cocaine is much cheaper, and anybody and everybody has access to it both physically and economically. The price of cocaine has remained frozen since the 1980s, so what was expensive in the past, most people can afford in the present. Price of cocaine unchanged since 1980s While the prices of housing, food, and transportation (the Spanish CPI has increased more than fourfold since 1982), a gram of cocaine, from which 10 to 20 doses are obtained, still costs the same as it did then: about 60 euros or 10,000 pesetas. “The increase in production in Colombia and Peru means there is more cocaine, purer and relatively cheaper, throughout Europe,” Joan R. Villalbí, the Spanish government’s delegate for the National Drug Plan, told BBC Mundo. Another reason why Spain ranks high in cocaine consumption is tourism. With nearly 90 million tourists each year, areas such as the Costa del Sol, Barcelona, Madrid, and the Balearic and Canary Islands are home to a wealth of nightlife, which includes a lot of recreational drug use and abuse. Mendez said the high influx of tourists facilitates distribution and increases consumption. In an ironic or even sarcastic way, cocaine has become democratised in Spain, as well as trivialised, and perhaps not taken as seriously as it should be.