I am from the island of Mallorca, Spain, and was arrested at Hong Kong International Airport for carrying in my suitcase pills containing an illegal substance known as “ecstasy” — specifically about 14,000 pills with a total weight of 2.367 kg.
I am currently 58 years old and held at Stanley Prison, awaiting a Supreme Court hearing for sentencing, having voluntarily pleaded guilty.
I wish to share the story of my life and explain how I made the mistake that placed me in this unnatural situation as a prisoner in Hong Kong.
I was born into a middle-class family. My father worked at Banco de Santander. He was a family man without vices, honorable and honest, and instilled in my brother and me the values of honesty and legality.
My mother was a housewife who always cared for the family with dedication. My father passed away in 2017, and my mother, now 87, lives in a care home for the elderly in Mallorca.
As a child, I had no luxuries, but I never lacked the basics for living well as a middle-class child, nor food or the means for an adequate education. At that time, primary school ran from first to eighth grade, and I consistently got good grades in all subjects. After primary school, I began secondary education, also with good grades, but had to interrupt my studies to work at a bank at age 16. I stayed there until becoming a branch director. I left my banking career in 2012, having combined it with nighttime university studies for a degree in Economics.
In 1991, I married for the first time and had my only son, passing on the same values I received from my parents.
In 2015, with savings and loans, I acquired a beach rental business for hammocks and umbrellas in northern Mallorca. The first years weren’t bad — I could partially repay the investment. Still, each season I had to pay a high tax to the town hall before summer and cover the business’s operational costs, such as staff wages.
With the arrival of COVID-19 in March 2020, my situation suddenly worsened and led me to total ruin. That year, beaches were closed or had restricted capacity, causing total losses. The town hall showed no mercy over the tax payment for that year, or even the following year.
By 2020, I was already separated from my first wife, and my second wife left me when I fell into economic ruin.
In two years, I lost everything — even my home valued at €220,000, a three-story house with a private pool in one of Mallorca’s best residential areas — and had to move into a friend’s home, sleeping in a small room she offered me.
In 2022, I tried a hospitality business to recover losses, but it failed and worsened my ruin.
In August 2023, urged by debt and encouraged by an alleged friend who promised me a year-long house maintenance job in Amsterdam with a salary of €2,500 per month, I accepted. Having no other prospects, I traveled by train from Lyon after leaving Palma with almost no money. On arrival in Amsterdam, I received a message canceling the job without explanation.
In Amsterdam, without money for food or lodging, I became homeless, scavenging food from trash and sleeping on the street or under a bridge, enduring cold and rain, constant fear and anxiety. Amsterdam is known for its freedom of various vices, sexual and drug-related. When I slept on the street, I was never sure I would wake up the next day.
In May 2024, while on the street, I met a man from Suriname who said he had a brother owning a restaurant in Malta, another in the Antilles, and a third in Hong Kong. He needed someone with a passport to transport a suitcase with food products. After meeting several times, he offered me a week in a Hong Kong hotel, all travel expenses paid, and €500. In my desperate state of homelessness and depression, I accepted.
It is true that upon arriving at Hong Kong Airport, I suspected the suitcase might not contain food products and instead something illegal, but I did not know the contents since I had not opened it since Amsterdam. Given my desperate situation, my only thought was to enjoy a week in a hotel with all expenses covered — after 10 months sleeping on the streets, it felt like a dream.
At customs in Hong Kong Airport, I realized my mistake and that I should never have accepted to transport that suitcase.
I regret it every day. I recognize this act could cause irreversible harm to human health. I ask for forgiveness and hope that my honest testimony will prevent others, especially homeless individuals like me, from going through the same experience.
Do not do it. Do not ruin your lives for a money transaction.
Even if offered large sums, do not do it. Think twice — it is not a legitimate “job.” We all have family: parents, children, spouses, siblings. Do not choose this path; it leads nowhere good.
The drugs you transport, if not intercepted, will only cause harm and destroy families. If intercepted, you will lose your freedom for many years, and when you are free again, nothing will be the same — your relationships, your cities… everything will have changed. And above all, time only goes one way — you will be older.
Note: This letter has been translated from its original in Spanish. Switch language to read the original letter.