Maro and Nerja had a heavy police presence. Fully armed police officers belonging to a special unit in six vehicles mounted road checks.

These were no ordinary Guardia Civil officers but rather Grupo de Acción Rápida (GAR). The GAR is an antiterrorist unit and used in other high-risk operations, which explained the submachine guns, which they trained on vehicles when other officers searched car boots.

They are not only used on Spanish soil but have also been deployed to Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Afganistán, Jerusalem, Haití and Lebanon, etc.

Showing press credentials, we asked what was happening but were brushed off with, “this is an ordinary road control operation, that’s all.”

Whether it has anything to do with the middle-aged Czech citizen who was found dead on the 27th near Maro beach is not clear. The autopsy showed that the victim, whose body was found on his own land where he lived in a caravan, had met a violent death .

The case is being treated as homicide as a forensic examination of the body showed signs that the man had been beaten and had a hole in his head. The body was taken to the Axarquía hospital in Torre del Mar.

The victim’s naked body was found in the finca where he lived, located next to the road that leads down to Maro beach, where the man had a caravan.

The six-vehicle convoy of Toyota Land Cruisers later moved on to mount the same in the autovía entrance to Torrox.

(News: Maro/Nerja, Axarquia, Costa del Sol, Malaga, Andalucia)