MADRID, April 24 (Xinhua) -- The Director of the Spanish National Police force, German Lopez Iglesias, on Tuesday inaugurated the First Interpol World Congress on Drugs in the city of Toledo, 74 km south of the Spanish capital of Madrid.
In his speech to open the event, which brings together over 200 high ranking representatives of the police forces of over 100 countries, Lopez Iglesias highlighted the "firm commitment" Spain and its police made to eradicate drug trafficking.
"We are winning the battle against drugs bit by bit," he said, explaining that "police pressure" was growing on drug traffickers with "more seizures and more gangs being broken up."
The conference aims to look at the new tendencies in the world of drug smuggling, as well as the routes used by traffickers and the strategies Interpol needs to combat the threat on an international level.
In a recent interview with Xinhua, Spanish National Police Inspector, Felix Lopez explained that Spain is "a country where drugs such as hashish and cocaine mainly pass through on-route to other places in Europe."
Inspector Lopez also stressed the importance of organizations such as Interpol in the fight against drugs, saying international cooperation was "the most important factor" in the war on drugs and that without different police forces working together, "it would be impossible to combat drug trafficking."
Proof of the effectiveness of that cooperation in aiding Spain's battle against drug smuggling is that in 2016 authorities seized 324,379 kilos of hashish, mainly produced in Morocco and 15,629 kilos of cocaine from Latin America.