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Date Published: 20/07/2026

Police scramble to a packed La Manga beach after a 'suspicious package' washed up ashore

Bathers watched on as officers and lifeguards moved in to secure the mystery haul. The Guardia Civil was poised to investigate. There was just one problem

It had all the hallmarks of a significant find. On Saturday, a large package washed up on a busy beach in La Manga del Mar Menor, right on the boundary where the municipalities of Cartagena and San Javier meet. Witnesses described it as suspicious.

Word spread quickly among the bathers. Policía Local officers arrived and secured the area. Lifeguards came roaring across the sand on a quad bike to remove it, all in full view of hundreds of people who carried on swimming and sitting under their umbrellas while quietly speculating about what was inside. The consensus among onlookers? Drugs.

It wasn't an unreasonable assumption. This stretch of coastline has previous. Waterproof packages containing cocaine or hashish have been found on regional beaches before, having fallen from the speedboats used by drug traffickers and subsequently drifted ashore or been spotted floating near the coast.

Just this week, a suspicious vessel was filmed pulling up to a beach in Cartagena to refuel, with those loading jerrycans onto the boat covering their faces to avoid being identified. So when something large and unidentified washes up on a beach packed with summer visitors, it's not surprising that people jump to conclusions.

In cases like these, it's laboratory analysis that confirms what investigators already suspect, and jurisdiction falls to the Guardia Civil. Police sources acknowledged that finding those responsible would be difficult, as they were almost certainly long gone by the time the package was discovered.

The Guardia Civil was ready. The lab was waiting. The bathers were watching.

In the end it was just an innocent bale of straw. Completely, gloriously, anticlimactically a bale of straw.

It turns out bales of straw washing up in the Mediterranean is not as unusual as it sounds. They typically fall from livestock transport vessels, drift with the current and eventually make landfall on the nearest beach. They're an environmental nuisance and a maritime safety hazard, and they need to be removed when they appear.

Which the lifeguards duly did, on their quad bike, while the bathers went back to their ice creams.

Image: wikicommons

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