The trafficker Oubiña, from the bundle of drugs to the bundle of clothes: this is how he sells through the markets of Galicia

Laureano Oubiña has been somewhat crestfallen for a few days. He, who keeps his plot in this story of ours as the great tobacco smuggler and hashish trafficker, the powerful lord of smoke, the one from the Pazo Baión that the anti-drug mothers assaulted, now has problems selling his shirts with his face and their truths. He says something that the bureaucracy of MRV, the courier company, has them stopped in his garage in Villagarcía de Arousa (Pontevedra). He's like hurt. He, who used to buy the drug from the Moroccan currito and take it with him for the brat to smoke in Amsterdam, now has a hard time taking his bundle (of clothes) to the boy from Zamora who wants one of his shirts because he has seen him in Netflix's Farina.

But when he receives EL ESPAÑOL this Wednesday at the Becerreá market (Lugo) to sell them, he already arrives redeemed. The website went live on Tuesday and has been a resounding success. That says. Even so, the business has fallen due to the pandemic and the cancellation of the fairs and he cannot give up getting up at 5:00 in the morning to go to work in the squares of the Galician towns. But he talks to everyone about his website, his products, the book he has written, and the wines he will sell and which he proudly posts on www.lanecora.gal, which bears the name of the operation led by Judge Baltasar Garzón and which knocked him down

-How long have you spent in prison?

-Unless someone was left behind; 32 years, 9 months and 15 days.

There was a time when Laureano Oubiña (74 years old) was something else. He was the boss, the boss, and the Rías Baixas was divided between him and his colleagues: Sito Miñanco and Manuel Charlín -head of the Los Charlines clan-. It was in the 1980s when these tobacco smugglers switched to other herbs and, from total impunity and compadreo with Galician politicians and police, they became the target of the DEA, the US anti-drug agency, and became the face of to beat for a squadron of mothers, agents, and judges who watched as an entire generation died pale and thin in the doorway below, the needle still dangling from their arms.

Although he admits to having trafficked coffee, gasoline, tobacco and hashish, he was always proud, in his own way, of never having touched cocaine or heroin. Despite this, he now jumps back to the present and is being prosecuted for Operation Matta against the main cocaine distribution network in Asturias. In one of the records, five kilos of the drug were found and they are accusing him of being the "intermediary or supplier." “I have been able to carry five tons, am I going to get wet for five kilos?”, he defends himself.

Apart from its shadows, it still arouses philias, a mix between fascination and magnetism. One does not know if it is because of the Spanish mischievous culture, which relativises, or because of something deeper, such as what makes Pablo Escobar's route through the life the most requested by tourists who land in Medellín. It is enough to see Oubiña in the towns: the older ones stay in their circles whispering and pointing and the youngsters go out of their way to ask for photos and merchandising.

-Why does a society like ours create 'heroes' like you?

-You don't have to create heroes like me because I'm not a hero of anything, of anything. I have been convicted of three hash sentences that I served day by day. None of ETA or any of the murderers I met inside did that time every day. Then they sentenced me for money laundering and they did not want to recast them. They treated me like shit, like an offal. There are first, second, third, fourth and fifth class prisoners here. And like me, many I know.

-Do you have any regrets?

-I have nothing to regret. You have to repent before committing the crime. Now, if you ask me if I would do it again…absolutely no. Because nothing is worth a week in jail for. But why would I have to regret it?

-To be at peace with God even if it is.

-Me with God I'm a fucking motherfucker. I don't know if it's God or the devil, but someone protects me. Because I drove more miles asleep than awake and I'm still here.

Laureano, converted

When the church bells dictate that it is 8:00, Laureano Oubiña's van shines in front of the Becerreá Town Hall, up on the sidewalk with his face, his name and his number private telephone numbers engraved on the plate. The first thing is to see where to stand, ask the guy in the stall across the street if his cousin is finally coming or if he can keep the space. Can. And he begins to unload the trunk of the vehicle, everything just dawned, like one more street vendor.

Seeing Oubiña handle loads has its poetic aura. It gives an air of reminiscence of another era, of early mornings on the Galician coast where those sailors who, when they grew up, wanted to be something else, earned “their good rooms”. It already looks somewhat more worn, yes, because age weighs heavily, but it is in his blood. And he opens the van with the boxes fitted to the millimeter and sets up the stall and places the T-shirts and books, one by one and carefully, knowing that it is the only thing he has left.

The ex-trafficker has been selling what he was for a few years now. It all started with his book The Whole Truth, which he made after being released from prison for the last time in 2017, and from the title of the chapters he began to draw slogans that he embodies on T-shirts. He says that he cannot have companies and bank accounts in his name and that, for this reason, he has given his image to a company, with the only condition that it allows him to go in person to sell everything. The company has a bird as its logo. The police nicknamed him El Pajarito.

-Do you feel more comfortable in the legal field?

-Much more. It is another tranquility. I already went from illegal topics many years ago. My time is over. That of the illegal is over. But they won't let me have an account in a bank or to collect the pension that I receive, which until now was 398 euros and has now risen to 400 per month.

-Before, I had problems hiding the money, from so many bills I had, and now that pension... is a notable difference.

-I don't care, money doesn't call me. I am not ambitious for money and I have little Galician: because I go straight ahead, loud and clear, without talking behind the scenes like most Galicians do. Me, with having to live up to date, comes to me. A room and a bed to sleep, or not sleep, a shower to shower and a kitchen… I have plenty of the rest.

-Well, what a job he chose to not care about money...

-What job?

-The one with the smuggler

-I left home at the age of 16 and had to look for a life as best I could. That is what has happened. She never should have, because she didn't have to. But, what's done, chest. Have I served my sentences? Yes. What else do I owe to whom? Host. I have paid my sentences, what the hell do you want from me. I'm not talking to you [he points out, pointing to the journalists], but to those who won't let me sell my books and merchandising. Do you want me to go back to the old ways or what? I have the phone with the constantly connected location. They must listen to the powders that I do, or the ones that I don't do. And I'm delighted. I have no problem, the more they follow me, the more protected I feel. I have nothing to hide.

-Who doesn't let you sell your books?

-Normally, where the PSOE or a left-wing party governs, I have a thousand problems to place the market. Who has no problems is Otegi. Otegi is a man of peace. Otegi has no problem, El Corte Inglés sells his book but not mine.

Oubiña is a big guy, broad-shouldered and with hands who has spent his life working, even if it is in his own way. He speaks, at first, quiet. But it's trigger-happy and it explodes quickly, showing that there's something deeper behind it. He has a reputation for being violent, although he shakes his head when you remind him of it, and he approaches you and looks deeply at you when he says something, as if wanting to underline and bold what comes out of his mouth. Intimidates.

Shortly after setting up the t-shirt stall, and seeing that no one comes to buy anything from him, he says he's going to the cattle fair in the highest part of Becerreá. “Okay, but he comes back quickly, I won't sell anything without you”, answers the woman who accompanies him and who has asked not to appear in this report. And Oubiña leaves, and the anecdotes fall out of his pockets. He attacks the prison officials the same way, recalling that day when one was killed and the cells were left without light because they thought they had hidden the spike in the wiring, which says that no one has died from hashish: no one except that pig who had a friend in his garden and that he ate a bundle that had been buried.

Walk through the cattle fair and blend in. A while alone. It doesn't take long for them to see him from the crowds. It is entering a place and everyone turning around, staring for a few seconds, and returning to their business, but in silence. "Oubiña, buy me a cheese," a vendor tells her. He is intuited with money, that's what people think. Namely. But then he eats an octopus a feira with his friend Manuel, whom he knows from the fairs and with whom he has made a friendship, and it is Manuel who invites everyone and the one with "are you more of a white wine?" diner and "bring another bottle, but white", to the waiter.

Oubiña shrinks in large and public spaces, when he knows that people are looking at him. She talks less and pretends nothing. He eats the octopus and leaves. "Oubiña, buy me a cheese", the seller tries again. Nothing.

His Golden Age

Back in the trenches, at the stand where he now sells his T-shirts, the woman who accompanies him says he hasn't placed a single one yet. Some kids had come to look, they asked for him and, since he wasn't there, they just left with his money. And it is that, despite everything, Laureano Oubiña has become a kind of pop myth. Proof of this is that, as soon as they arrive, the business does start to work and it is the young people who come over and, for each shirt they sell, two photos are taken with each of them.

A large part of the phenomenon that awakens comes from Fariña, the book by Nacho Carretero that has become a best-selling series on Netflix and now also a musical that is performed in theaters in Madrid. That has catapulted him, it has brought him closer to the public that did not know him and that now sees him more as the real alter ego of a fictional character, a cool dealer. Only the old people of the place seem to want to remember when they come across him and look away.

-The mothers against drugs, led by Carmen Avendaño, went from singing "Oubiña, bastard, out of Baión" to "Oubiña, bastard, rot in prison."

-What do I have to do with mothers? Did you go to a trial of who killed your children? Anyone for the subject of heroin and cocaine? No. As far as I know, hashish hasn't killed anyone and tobacco... they say it's what most people die from. Yes, I have smuggled tobacco but the Tabacalera has trafficked more than me and continues to do so.

-If you had Carmen Avendaño in front of you, what would you say to her?

-I have nothing to tell you. Nothing.

-Don't you empathize with the pain of mothers?

-Not at all. If a son of mine dies because of drugs, I shit on God and on the fucking trafficker. I'm not going to kick his house or the court, I'll kill the heroin dealer. Why didn't they go to the trials of the heroin traffickers, when they were their neighbors?

-Why did they go to yours?

-Because behind me was the Pazo de Baión. Those of heroin did not have pazos there, they had them outside of Galicia. And, remember, the biggest trafficker of all is the State itself.

The time of which he speaks is, for many, that dark and long night of the soul in which it is always three in the morning, as Fitzgerald would say. The narcos had bought the police, who went to work in Mercedes. They financed rallies of political parties and there was compadreo. They left everything to them and everything was theirs. But it broke out when they switched from tobacco to drugs and things got complicated. They lived better, they earned more money, but for a short time.

Popular knowledge says that the one who did not want to turn to drugs was Vicente Otero, alias Terito, patriarch of the Sito Miñanco cooperative, Manuel Charlín and Laureano Oubiña before they went to the major leagues. Terito was of the opinion that they did well with tobacco and they only risked a fine while selling hashish could end up in jail. In a meeting, Oubiña and he argued for that very reason and Terito shot the man who now sells T-shirts.

-Was it like that?

-That's a lie. Terito agreed where there was money. Who was he to tell me what to do? Just like the shooting at me. false, lie I was the one who shot him. There are witnesses, ask José Ramón Barral [former mayor of Ribadumia], who was there. The series does not even adapt to 50% of what Nacho Carretero's book puts, which, by the way, is a cut and paste of the clippings.

-Is it related to anyone from that era?

-No, I don't want to.

-Not even with Sito Miñanco?

-Sito is my friend. I do not speak to him. I wish I could because it would be already out. I will support him in any way I can. Legally. I am not going to say if he did or did not do it, I am not a policeman or a judge to investigate it. But he is my friend and will continue to be, and he will have my support as a person for the rest of his life. Let it be clear to everyone. Is my friend.

-Did you ever speak to Manuel Fraga or Adolfo Suárez?

-Yes, with both. With Suárez more than with Fraga. [And, despite the journalist's insistence, he does not want to say what they talked about]

-Did they know what he did?

-I guess they knew. Although Mr. Fraga lacked time when they carried out Operation Nécora; The next day, in front of my house and at a dinner, he raised his voice: "Oubiña, that great drug trafficker, we have to put him in jail!", he said, pointing. When a few days ago I had paid for dinner and a meeting there for him. So clear. By the way, the millions of pesetas with which I financed the PP were never returned to me. Those who financed UCD, yes, penny by penny. They wanted to pay me interest and everything.

When 1:00 p.m. arrives, the figure of Laureano Oubiña becomes small again. He has to collect, not talk about his golden age but earn tomorrow's bread. He folds with the same care that he set up the stall, placing the bundles of clothes back in the van and everything fits perfectly. It is a tetris that you have already played so much. In those, one passes by and blurts out his name and offers him a cigarette. He rejects it. Laureano Oubiña, the man who smokes, does not smoke. What things.

-The prison reinserts?

-Not at all. The one who enters good, he comes out bad for balls. The one who enters bad, comes out three times as a son of a bitch. It's a crime school. The jailer, when he gets up, looks to see who he can fuck with the most, especially someone he knows, like me.

-What do you expect from the future?

-That they let me live in peace and tranquility, honestly. The pension does not reach me to live.

Who has seen him and who sees him.

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