Flamenco dancer Rafael Amargo arrested in Alicante for drug trafficking

The bailaor Rafael Amargo has been arrested in Alicante for an alleged crime of drug trafficking, within the framework of an investigation opened last August following a complaint from his neighbors. Amargo, who was arrested after leaving a performance around 11 p.m. on Thursday, also faces the charge of attacking an agent of the authority, since he attacked the policemen who were waiting for him to take him to the cells of the Central Police Station. Alicante, according to sources from the National Police. It is expected that the artist from Granada will spend this Friday at the disposal of a court in Alicante.

The complaint filed by the dancer’s neighbors indicated that at no time had the alleged sale of narcotic substances stopped at Amargo’s home, located in the Centro district of Madrid, in the Malasaña neighborhood. The continuous transit of people through the apartment, who came to “sleep on the landing of the upper floors”, according to Europa Press, became “unsustainable”. At the farm gate it was common to find “syringes, white paper, and cigarette butts,” the complainants declared. The Court of Instruction 27 of Madrid opened proceedings in September and the agents began to monitor the choreographer’s home.

The investigations, which confirmed frequent visits by people to Amargo’s home, led, within the same police operation, to the arrest in February of another suspect, a 31-year-old man of Dominican nationality, living in the district of Tetuán, to which the supply of substances to a dozen points of sale is attributed, including the one that the dancer allegedly runs in his own home. This arrest intensified the work of the agents, who for operational reasons, determined that the best option to carry out the arrest of Amargo was to wait for him at the exit of his performance at the Casanova venue in Alicante, an Italian restaurant located in the Alicante’s Old Town where live performances are programmed. Next to him were four other people, including his partner, who were also arrested.

It is not the first time that Amargo has faced this accusation. He was also arrested on December 1, 2020 with his partner and two other people in the framework of Operation Codax (raven, in Latin, following an image of Bitter with some wings of this bird). Then, the Provincial Prosecutor’s Office of Madrid requested a sentence of nine years in prison for the dancer, considering him the continuous author of a crime against public health, in the form of sale of narcotics. To do this, he used his own home, located in the center of the capital, and “persistently” distributed the drugs in exchange for money. The Public Ministry then requested the same sentence for the alleged partner of the dancer, the producer and partner Eduardo de los Santos, whom it placed as the buyer of the substances.

The indictment of the Prosecutor’s Office maintains that, between April and December 2020 -in the midst of the pandemic-, Rafael Amargo (Granada, 46 years old) and Eduardo de los Santos “were dedicating themselves in a concerted and persistent manner to the distribution of narcotic substances , among other methamphetamine, to third parties in exchange for money”. The two defendants, according to the Public Ministry, bought the drug “jointly” from various suppliers, to later distribute it between them and sell it to third parties.

The dancer not only sold the narcotic substances to people who went to his home in Madrid -in the Centro district-, but according to the Prosecutor’s Office, he also “drove the substance to the place where the client indicated, for which he used his trusted man, the also accused Manuel Ángel Batista, his right hand in the productions, knowing what he was carrying, and after making the corresponding delivery he returned to his home to deliver the money obtained from the sale.” Of course, the Prosecutor’s Office does not accuse the artist’s partner, Lucía Mariana Bongianiano, who was also arrested by the agents of the Centro police station in the same police operation at the beginning of December 2020.

Both Rafael Amargo and Eduardo de los Santos, the main defendants, have always maintained their innocence in the operation and have stated that it was all a police setup, despite the evidence collected at their homes. On this occasion, several records have also been made.

The bailaor has even gone so far as to use Christian similes: “The higher this rises, the better because later I will have to see how I come down from the cross from which they are crucifying me… But the revenge remains as in (the Count of) Monte Cristo. Let’s see later how much it is worth to repair all this damage… You are beating me and crucifying me…”. Bitter will sit next June on the defendant’s bench.