Officers arrested 17 suspected gang members in the southeastern provinces of Alicante and Murcia. Two vehicles – including one believed to have been involved in the accident – and several weapons were also seized as part of the operation, Spain’s Civil Guard police said in a statement.
They began an investigation in October after arresting three people near a rubber dinghy in La Manga, a narrow coastal strip of land in Murcia on the Mediterranean coast.
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The boat, equipped with a powerful engine, was carrying 14 petrol cans, a satellite phone, clothes and food, leading authorities to suspect it belonged to a human trafficking ring.
The following month police were alerted to a highway pile-up in La Manga caused by a vehicle towing an inflatable boat which claimed the lives of two British men, aged 49 and 57, and injured 11 other people.
A police investigation concluded the vehicle towing the boat belonged to a criminal group which used inflatable boats to ferry people into Spain illegally from North Africa.
The Britons’ car was behind the vehicle and smashed into the boat after it came loose and blocked the road.
The driver of the vehicle pulling the speedboat on the trailer fled the scene. It was not immediately clear if he was among the 17 people arrested.
