Foreign citizens make up half of all arrests for organized crime activities in Spain, with many of them coming from Eastern Europe.

Source: “Spain’s Cocaine Trade Dominated by Bulgarians, Romanians,” Sofia News Agency, August 9, 2010.

Police on the Spanish island of Ibiza state that 40,000 Ecstasy pills are sold every day between June and September.

Organized by British drug gangs from Liverpool and Manchester, ecstasy pills are sold for $6 (5 Euros), as opposed to a bottle of beer sells for $15 (12 Euros) in the high end clubs on the island.

Source:  Fiona Govan, “Drug dealers sell 40,000 Ecstasy pills on Ibiza every day,” Telegraph, July 16, 2010.

45 percent of all European seizures for cocaine between 1998 to 2008 were in Spain.

Source:  UNODC, “The Globalization of Crime,” Chapter 4: Cocaine, June 2010.

According to reports mentioned by the US State Department, 90 percent of prostitutes working in the prostitution industry in Spain are forced to work as prostitutes.

Source:  US Department of State, “Country Narratives: Spain,” Trafficking in Persons Report 2010, June 2010.

In the second half of 2009, piracy in Spain cost $6.28 Billion (5.1 Billion Euros) to content producers. Legal sales in the country during the same period were $1.97 Billion (1.6 Billion Euros).

Movie piracy accounted for $2.95 Billion and music piracy for $2.83 Billion.

Of the digital music market, 95 percent is illegally downloaded.

Of the movie market, 83 percent of all movies are illegally downloaded.

53 percent of all video games are illegally downloaded.

And 19 percent of all digital books are pirated.

Source: Pamela Rolfe, “Piracy cost Spain $6 bil in 2nd half of ’09,” Hollywood Reporter, June 1, 2010.

Havocscope has calculated the possible financial value of drug trafficking in Spain to be $95 Billion based on the following data.

According to the Daily Mail (UK), 30 percent of all 500 Euro Bills in circulation were held in Spain. With 559 million individual 500 Euro notes in circulation, 167 million 500 Euro Bills were in Spain.

It has been well documented that drug traffickers favor the 500 Euro Bill due to its high denomination. It is much easier to move millions in drug revenue with the 500 Euro rather than a $100 Bill. Law enforcement officials in the United Kingdom stated that up to 90 percent of all 500 Euro Bills in circulation in the country have traveled through the hands of organized criminals.

Using the 167 million 500 Euro Bills in Spain and estimating that 90 percent of those bills were used for criminal purposes leads to 150 Million 500 Euro Bills in Spain from ill-gotten gains.

150 Million X 500 = 75 Billion Euros ($95 Billion based on May 19, 2010 exchange rate).

Spain is considered to be a key gateway to drugs entering the European Union, and this figure is in line with other European drug trade markets, such as the $83 Billion drug trade in Italy.

Please note that this figure is an estimate and it meant to show the possible amount of money involved in the drug trade in Spain. If you have additional data or another method to determine the drug trafficking market in Spain, please comment below.

Sources: Caroline Graham and Adam Luck, “How the 500 euro is financing a global crime wave of cocaine trafficking, the black market and tax evasion,” Daily Mail, January 30, 2010.

and  Dominic Casciani, “500 euro note – why criminals love it so,” BBC News, May 13, 2010.

In 2009, there were 3 billion illegal downloads of content over the Internet in Spain, with 21 million legal downloads.

Source:  Raphael Minder, “Pressure Grows on Spain to Curb Digital Piracy,” New York Times, May 16, 2010.

In 2006, Internet users in Spain illegally downloaded 132 Million movies from Internet sites.

In 2008, 350 Million movies were illegally downloaded from the Internet in Spain.

Source:  Ben Fritz, “In Spain, Internet piracy is part of the culture,” Los Angeles Times, March 30, 2010.