This is the astonishing moment drug smugglers beach their boat by stunned tourists after a Miami Vice-style sea chase.
The men were filmed heading towards the sand at speed and narrowly missing parasols sunseekers had moved away from in a hurry as they rammed it into dunes.
They jumped out of the vessel – a so-called narcolancha used to smuggle cannabis from Morocco into Spain – as police who had been pursuing them radioed to colleagues to scramble response vehicles.
Two of the men were arrested as they tried to make their getaway but the others escaped.
The extraordinary scenes happened on Monday on a packed beach called Los Enebrales in Punta Umbria in the south-west Spanish province of Huelva near the country’s border with Portugal.
The Spanish coastguard pursues a so-called narcolancha used to smuggle cannabis from Morocco into Spain
The men were filmed heading towards the sand at speed and narrowly missing parasols sunseekers had moved away from in a hurry as they rammed it into dunes
Local reports said the boat beached on the sand had been empty when it was abandoned, although it is thought the drug smugglers had been waiting for a call to pick up an illegal consignment of drugs from a larger ship further out to sea when they were spotted by police.
Footage of the moment they decided to head for the shoreline rather than trying to shake off the pursuing Civil Guard showed they came within a few feet of the spot where a family are thought to have been enjoying the sunshine before the drama unfolded.
Police were later seen inside the boat turning off the engine as tourists and locals looked on.
There were no reports of any injuries.
Beaches on the Costa del Sol further eastwards have been the scene of similar incidents in the past.
In 2018 a beach in Manilva near Estepona was the scene of a chase involving a police helicopter and a suspected drug smuggler.
The men jumped out of the vessel as police who had been pursuing them radioed to colleagues to scramble response vehicles
The extraordinary scenes happened on Monday on a packed beach called Los Enebrales in Punta Umbria in the south-west Spanish province of Huelva near the country’s border with Portugal
Some of the tourists were filmed running for their lives, fearing the high-speed boat was going to crash on the beach and into the crowd.
In September 2019 holidaymakers looked on stunned as a group of drug smugglers took over another beach in broad daylight near the resort of Estepona to transport cannabis resin from a speedboat to a 4×4 parked by the shoreline.
The gang of men, who threatened to kill witnesses if they alerted police, took less than three minutes to make the transfer and their getaway.
A drugs gang carry bags of what was claimed to be cannabis resin from a speedboat (right) to a parked car (left) on the Costa del Sol in Spain in 2019
The gang of men, who threatened to kill witnesses if they alerted police, took less than three minutes to make the transfer and their getaway
The men filmed running from the boat to the 4×4 and dumping the drugs into the back almost stumbled over two groups of sunbathers lying on towels on the sand as they sprinted between them with the bags of cannabis resin on their shoulders to reach the car.
One of the drugs traffickers could be heard shouting out in Spanish, in a chilling warning to one of the tourists the criminals ran past: ‘The mobile. If you call, I’ll kill you.’
The threat was made, and recorded by witnesses filming the drugs drop from a property overlooking the beach, at the start of the three-minute video.
