A British man has been shot dead on the Costa Blanca in the latest of a series of violent crimes that have rocked the popular holiday coastline.
The 29-year-old’s bullet-riddled body was found in a house just north of the popular tourist resort of Torrevieja.
Acting on a tip from friends that ‘something serious’ had happened to him on December 21 police found his bloodied body after going to the property.
Civil Guard detectives are understood to be treating it as a drugs-related murder. No arrests have yet taken place.
News of the latest killing comes less than three weeks after another Brit was shot at least three times in an underground car park nearby.
Detectives are investigating whether the two crimes and others in recent months involving British and Irish nationals on the Costa Blanca are related.
In the botched assassination attempt on December 11 around 15 bullets were reportedly fired at a 32-year-old British man’s vehicle in a residential area of Orihuela Costa.
The victim was rushed to Torrevieja University Hospital and admitted to an intensive care ward.
The man targeted was later identified locally as one of the two Brits arrested over an armed robbery last year at a cannabis club in nearby San Fulgencio.
He had been allowed to leave prison on bail around a fortnight before he was shot.
It was nearly seven months after he allegedly tried to escape police by taking an elderly couple hostage in their own homes.
Civil Guard detectives are investigating the shooting as a probable settling of scores between rival gangs.
In May, an Irishman was critically injured after being shot in the head close to a nearby shopping centre called La Zenia Boulevard.
Two suspects were arrested a fortnight later on suspicion of attempted murder.
In June a second 29-year-old Irishman was stabbed in the neck from behind as hewas urinating near the same shopping centre and left needing a life-saving operation.
A 58-year-old Irishman was arrested over the knife attack in July.
On January 7, the body of Belfast-born father-of-one John George was found in an orchard in Rojales near Torrevieja after anguished appeals by his family following his disappearance the previous month.
Last week five people were arrested in a major drug trafficking crackdown in Alicante, as the National Police dismantled a criminal network moving cocaine and ecstasy across Torrevieja and Almoradí.
The suspects—three men and two women, aged 35 to 50—are accused of running an organized operation supplying cocaine to local dealers. Three of them have now been remanded in custody.
Six properties in Rojales, Daya Nueva, Catral, and Almoradí were raided with police finding 4.5 kilos of cocaine, 1 kilo of ecstasy pills, 16 grams of MDMA, and €14,000 in cash.
Authorities noted the suspects’ elaborate hiding methods, including secret stashes inside a modified butane canister.
Crime in Catalonia
In Catalonia, more than 50 crimes are reported every hour with thefts and cyber fraud accounting for almost 50% of all detected crimes.
Overall, crime rates are down 4.5% compared to the first half of 2024, with notable declines in homicides (from 44 last year to 24 this year) and burglaries, which fell 15%, but drug trafficking offences rose 8.4%.
Rapes are particularly on the rise, rising by 22%, from 741 sexual assaults with penetration in the first half of last year compared to 904 in the same period in 2025.
Alicante province’s crime rate rose by 4.7% in the first half of 2025 compared to 2024.
Torrevieja leads with the highest crime ratio: 5 crimes per 100 residents.
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