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A 41-year-old from Kingston upon Thames in Surrey and a 50-year-old from Thornbury, Gloucestershire, were also held. He was suspected of involvement in such imports on a flight from Caracas to Paris, of 1.3 tons of cocaine seized at Roissy airport in 2013.
A source close to the inquiry said: “The entire three tonnes of cocaine were due to end up on the streets of Britain but they were going to be transported in parts”. This cocaine was sold to two British gangs in Malaga and Marbella.
The packages were stamped with Real Madrid and MasterChef logos, used to code the destination of the drugs, and meant to be divided up among British organized crime groups, police said.
“Several bricks of cocaine weighing around 700 kilos hidden in a false roof behind the driver’s seat”.
The rest of the drugs were found disguised in the form of wooden pallets in an industrial warehouse in Pontevedra, in Galicia.
Of those arrested eight are Britons, the Sun newspaper reported.
The police statement said police also seized 1.2 million euros ($1.3 million) and a handgun.
Those arrested included buyers from the Netherlands and Britain as well as Spaniards transporting the drugs, police said in a statement. The police intervened on the day the drugs were to be delivered in Costa del Sol.
The drugs find is the biggest in the Galicia region for two decades, the Liverpool Echo reports.
The cocaine arrived from South America by boat.
This story has been corrected to show number of people arrested was 11, not 12.
Two Spanish and two Dutch suspects were arrested as 300kg of the substituted cocaine was being collected on behalf of the British group.
Spain is a key drug smuggling route into Europe.
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