The Xunta de Galicia has moved to stop a tourism venture led by Laureano Oubiña, the former smuggler and ex-convict. He planned to guide paying passengers along maritime routes once used to traffic tobacco and hashish. Tourism de Galicia determined that the proposal had the characteristics of a package tour, which must be marketed through an authorized travel agency. The regional government opened sanctioning proceedings, arguing that the planned activity violated tourism regulations and risked damaging Galicia’s image.
Oubiña, now 80, had nearly filled the 150 available places for his one-day “Ruta del contrabando y narcotráfico” boat trip through the Ría de Arousa. Passengers, including families with minors, were to pay €189 each to hear his account of smuggling operations, from unloading contraband to evading law enforcement. The planned route ran from O Grove, past the island of Ons, to Ribeira, taking in locations associated with Oubiña’s operations in the 1970s and 1980s.
The sanctioning file, directed at Oubiña’s company, Pejurito S.L.U., cited the absence of an authorized travel agency behind the original proposal. It also said the activity could associate Galicia with notorious criminal events, undermining efforts to promote quality tourism. Oubiña was given less than a month to regularize the business or face penalties. The administrative objection was distinct from a wider ethical dispute over whether a commercial tour should turn the history and suffering associated with drug trafficking into a tourist attraction.
Oubiña has opposed the Xunta’s intervention, saying he had been trying to reintegrate into society since leaving prison in 2017. He presented the project as a chance to tell his own account of Galicia’s smuggling history. In a video cited by El Correo Gallego, he said officials wanted him “to return to a life of crime” and described the intervention as an attack on his freedom of expression. He has previously published books and marketed albariño wine, and has also sold merchandise associated with his criminal past. For the maritime proposal, he had arranged for a local ferry operator to divert from its usual route to Ons and follow paths once used for smuggling. He planned to describe how shipments of up to 15 tonnes of hashish and thousands of boxes of tobacco were brought ashore with help from local sand barges.
The concept has since been recast as a land-based experience called “Oubiña desmonta Fariña,” organized with the Galician travel agency Galitravel. Scheduled for 31 October and 1 November 2026, the €185-per-person itinerary is due to start and end at Oubiña’s winery in Barrantes, Ribadumia. It includes former smuggling locations and a stop at the winery, with meals and breakfast also planned. Its promotion describes the trip as a way to learn “the true history of smuggling” and hear experiences that “were never told.” Using a travel agency addresses the licensing obstacle cited in the decision on the original boat tour, while leaving the broader debate over commercialization of criminal history unresolved.
That debate has also surfaced in legal disputes over fictional portrayals of Oubiña’s life. In December 2025, Spain’s Supreme Court annulled a €15,000 award made to him by the Provincial Court of Pontevedra in a case in which he had sought €1.5 million from producers over, among other matters, a brief, non-explicit sexual scene involving his second wife. The court treated Oubiña as a public figure because of his drug-trafficking convictions and considered the scene part of a fictional narrative, distinguishing fiction from news reporting. Legal commentator Bea de Vicente has described the line between an educational account and commercial exploitation of criminal history as complex. She noted that a tourism licence would not by itself settle questions of honor or whether an offender should profit from the story of his own crimes.
The controversy comes as Galicia seeks to reinforce its image as a destination for high-quality, family-friendly tourism. Oubiña has said that, if successful, he would expand the tours elsewhere in Galicia and to Portugal, reconstructing his criminal past for paying visitors. His plans have also included a possible route tracing his 13-month escape from Spanish authorities, which ended with his arrest in Greece. The regional government’s response reflects broader concerns about the effects of unconventional tourism on local branding. In Madrid, authorities recently faced a different kind of crisis when a massive wildfire forced thousands to evacuate, highlighting the challenges of managing tourism and public safety in high-profile regions. Details of the emergency are available in this report on the Madrid wildfire evacuations. The dispute over Oubiña’s tour puts the balance between commercial chance and historical memory into sharp relief, with the region’s tourism identity also at stake.
