Spain bar shooting: Holidaymakers 'frightened' in surreal aftermath

BBC News

2 days ago

It's less than 36 hours after a gangland double murder in a busy bar on the Costa Del Sol, and there is no sign of the Spanish police - apart from an occasional patrol car gliding by.No cordon, no tape, no forensics in white suits, no officer guarding the front door of Monaghans Bar in Fuengirola.According to a local cameraman, it was the same on Sunday afternoon - the day after Ross Monaghan and Eddie Lyons Jnr were gunned down.In the homeland of the two men who had been shot dead, the case would be classed as a top level "category A" homicide with the bar sealed off and turned upside down for days afterwards.
This is Spain, not Scotland. But it must surely be wrong to assume the lack of a visible presence means a lack of interest from the Spanish National Police.This part of the country is no stranger to violence linked to organised crime and this was the murder of two men in a public place.They were shot dead in cold blood in a busy bar and bystanders could easily have been injured or killed.The mayor of Fuengirola, Ana Mula, has been quoted as saying the police need more resources to deal with the shootings and the general threat of drug-related organised crime.
When I arrived late on Monday morning, Mongahans was the only place not open for business in the long strip of pubs and restaurants along the beachfront, where holidaymakers basked in the sun and swam in the sparkling sea.Staff were inside but made it clear they didn't want to talk about what had happened. The owners of neighbouring businesses felt the same way.British tourists who'd been in Monaghans before the shooting described it as a friendly bar.
They said a group of Scottish men were watching the Champion's League final in the pub before the shooting. They were boisterous but not behaving badly and Eddie Lyons Jnr and Ross Monaghan were with them.Those men would have witnessed the horrifying murders of their friends.A video filmed afterwards showed a Scottish man on the phone, saying "Someone's got shot in the head."David Meddicks from Glasgow had left the bar with his wife a couple of hours before.
He recalled: "We went back to our hotel for food and later on at the reception of the hotel, two wee Spanish women ran in, shouting "bang, bang, bang, bang.""We looked and we could see the police and all the blue lights. We had been thinking of going back down for another drink and decided not to bother. So I'm quite glad I didn't."An Englishman who been in the pub said: "We were there an hour before and walked back later and found out what happened. "It made us want to go home, to be quite honest. You go away on holiday and you don't expect this. Really frightening."Another tourist, Robert Sorman from Bathgate, said: "You've heard of the Costa Del Crime but you never expect it to happen when you're here."
An elite Costa Del Sol-based anti-drug and organised crime unit is heading the investigation, reporting to a local magistrate who is in charge of the inquiry overall.The Spanish police have said very little in public so far and there has been no official confirmation of the identity of the two victims.Reporters with experience of investigations in Spain say that's not unusual and to be fair, police in Scotland rarely speak about ongoing inquiries into organised crime unless they absolutely have to.The Spanish will be seeking the assistance of Police Scotland to get intelligence on the background of the two men, and it's likely that Scottish detectives will be travelling to the Costa Del Sol at some point.The UK's National Crime Agency has full-time staff in Spain who will be facilitating such co-operation.
'This won't go unavenged'
There is speculation that the shootings are linked to the ongoing gangland feud in central Scotland which has resulted in dozens of incidents, including alleged attempted murders, and more than 40 arrests.Some of the people targeted in the violence are linked to the Daniels crime group - long-time rivals of another serious organised crime group, the Lyons family, of which Eddie Lyons Jnr and Ross Monaghan were members.But their murders would represent a massive escalation in the level of violence compared to what has gone before.The killings of two senior figures from the Scottish underworld in a bar in a foreign country is unprecedented.It's possible that it was unrelated to the feud; that something else lies behind it.One thing's certain; Police Scotland will be deeply concerned about revenge attacks and more bloodshed.As one former officer put it: "This won't go unavenged forever."