Galician OC groups seem to be very underrated in terms of contemporary news headlines , yet it's alleged that a pretty huge chunk of imported cocaine enters Europe thanks to these fellows .

Wikipedia has an article about these groups ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galician_mafia ) which seems to be very scant in the way of information IMO . Especially when you consider the sort of market share they are supposed to hold over the cocaine trade . Which begs the question of has Galicia lost some of its importance as a major cocaine entry point ? Or have Colombian cartels and/or Ndrangheta groups pushed Galician OC groups to the side a bit ?

Also is there any information available at all about the structure/rank system of these groups ? I realize that that Wiki article mentions something about these groups having a family based clan structure , but that's a pretty vague statement , so I'd be curious about more in depth info if it exists .

They are very close to the Colombians.

The best-known Galician drug trafficker of the last three decades José Ramón Prado Bugallo aka Sito Miñanco, returned to the narcotics business from Algeciras (Cádiz) and try to introduce 4,416 kilos of cocaine into Europe in two shipments between October and November last year. Under the new aliases of Mister and Mario, Prado Bugallo, 62, supposedly supplied cocaine to Dutch, Albanian and Italian traffickers. The investigators consider him the maximum head of the organization, to which they informed all the members of the organization. The judge sended the historical Galician narco to prison.

Earlier this month Manuel Charlín (85 years) and his 57-year-old son Melchor have been arrested in connection with a large-scale investigation after the interception of a batch of cocaine.
The arrest of the notorious ancient drug lord shows that the classic drug trade in the north of Spain is by no means exterminated. He would be the leader of the most violent northern Spanish crime organization of all time.
A total of 28 people have been detained in this action, including 14 men from the Charlín organization in Galicia, a criminal association that has been active in the region for decades, comparable with the Italian clans in this crime sector.
Manuel Charlín has now been arrested for the fifth time in his long career as a drug dealer. He, like some other older members of the clan, was allowed to await his trial in freedom after an interrogation.
Drug-handling organizations have always benefited from parties that can take drugs on the mainland, for example the Galicia route has been widely used by British and Irish criminal groups, which in turn have historical ties with the originally (partly) Celtic history of this part of Spain.

Does the Castanitas cartel or any of the other Southern Spanish cartels have anything to do with the Galicians ?

Smuggling. That's basically the main activity of the Galicians. They know the coast and other criminal organizations make use of the services of the Galicians.
They don't really involve themselves in any other rackets, they have little interest in any distribution-type of wholesaling and they're not really active outside the confines of the Galician coast. They just smuggle, but they make quite a bit of money doing so.

Drug trafficking is what all criminal groups connect to eachother.

The Netflix series Farina (Cocaine Coast) is based on the life of Sito Miñanco.

Galician boss Sito Miñanco was sentenced by a court in Pontevedra to 4 years.

Drug trafficking operation broken up in Spain and Portugal
AUGUST 18, 2019 16:24 EDITOR MOB WATCH
A drug trafficking organisation operating throughout the Iberian peninsular has been dismantled, according to a statement released by the Spanish National Police. In an operation against the gang, 475 kilos of cocaine were seized and a total of 14 people arrested: 11 in the northwestern city of Pontevedra, two in Valencia and one in Portugal.

Police carried out nine raids during which they seized 12,000 euros in cash, 12 satellite phones, four vehicles with double bottoms and a trailer equipped with a sophisticated hydraulic hiding system, in which the organisation moved more of 300 kilos of cocaine. The Civil Guard also discovered an indoor marijuana plantation with a thousand plants that belonged to the organisation.

Investigations began last year, when police specialised in combating organised crime learned of the existence of a criminal group based in Pontevedra, made up of people with a history of drug trafficking.

In July last year, the investigation intervened in the delivery of more than 300 kilos of cocaine as it was being moved from Galicia in the north west of Spain to Valencia in its eastern Mediterranean coast.

The agents discovered the drug in a garage in the town of Quart de Poblet near Valencia, being guarded by two members of the organisation.

In Portugal, 175 kilograms of cocaine were seized which had arrived from the neighbouring Spanish province of Pontevedra. One person was arrested near Coimbra in this joint operation between the Judicial Police of Porto and the Spanish National Guard.

According to the police, the cocaine would arrive in Galicia from South America before being transported to various locations in Spain and Portugal in trailers equipped with false bottoms with capacity to store more than 300 kilograms of the drug.

The detainees used advanced technical means to avoid being detected and invested significant amounts of money in secure communications, Spanish police said.

https://eu-ocs.com/drug-trafficking-operation-broken-up-in-spain-and-portugal/

Jailed drug kingpin sues Netflix over portrayal as cocaine trafficker
Laureano Oubiña served 22 years in prison for trafficking hashish. Picture: EDUARDO PARRA/GETTY IMAGES
By ISAMBARD WILKINSON
12:05PM NOVEMBER 24, 2023
4 COMMENTS
A convicted “narco” godfather from the drug-smuggling clans of Spain’s northwest coast is suing Netflix for $2.5 million for portraying him as an impotent and violent cocaine trafficker.

Laureano Oubina, 77, who was released in 2017 after serving 22 years in prison for trafficking hashish, claims that the television series Cocaine Coast (Farina) caused him “moral damage”.

“The life of Mr Laureano Oubina has worsened considerably since the broadcast of this series because he is portrayed as a person capable of taking the life of another, violent, sexist, a cocaine trafficker, impotent, vicious, unfaithful, a bad father, a bad husband, a brute, foolish, vengeful, an abuser of women, ignorant and a mafioso,” said Jorge Paladino, his lawyer.

Cocaine Coast gives a fictionalised account of the rise of Galicia’s narco-clans in the 1980s and 1990s in the region’s lush inlets and Atlantic waters. In the 1940s Galician clans smuggled items such as sugar and soap from Portugal. Two decades later the trade moved to American tobacco but then evolved into smuggling hashish from Morocco and cocaine from Colombia.

The series, which premiered in August 2018 and reached 2.5 million Spanish homes, opens with Oubina, who was considered the largest transporter of hashish among Galician traffickers, and his wife in their luxurious rural estate, Pazo de Baion. The mansion was seized and sold by the state for $25 million in 2008.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/wo...s-story/6c746253d5fa414d869d950de60d9fc9