OPINION: Let’s smash the drink spiking menace in Spain!

Dilip kuner

Olive Press

6
03.03.2026

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OPINION: Let’s smash the drink spiking menace in Spain!

AS the festive season approaches, the Olive Press is relaunching its Smash the Spiking campaign.

First launched in 2014, our new call to action goes under the banner: ‘Eyes Out for All’.

Joining forces with Sala Group Holdings, one of the Costa del Sol’s leading hospitality firms, we aim to tackle the growing menace of drink spiking across Spain.

It’s happening far too often – in Marbella, Fuengirola, Benidorm, Alicante, Palma and beyond – to both men and women.

READ MORE: EYES OUT FOR ALL: The Olive Press is relaunching its ‘Smash the Spiking’ campaign with Sala Group Holdings to tackle the growing menace of drink spiking in Spain

Victims report being pricked with syringes or having something tipped in their drinks and often wake up hours later, usually robbed but sometimes worse.

These attacks not only ruin nights but can have long-lasting emotional and physical consequences.

Yet despite repeated requests, police have failed to provide up-to-date figures for us. That silence must end.

Sala Group boss Ian Radford is taking decisive action – training all staff at his bars and restaurants to spot the signs, making CCTV available to victims and introducing the Ask Angela system so anyone who feels unsafe can ask discreetly for help.

“I know as many as 20 people who’ve been victims on the coast over the last five years,” he told us. “It’s time to stop it. As business owners, we must be responsible.”

The Costa del Sol’s nightlife is one of its greatest attractions – vibrant, welcoming and fun. We refuse to let fear, silence or predators destroy that.

This campaign calls on venues, police and revellers alike to keep their eyes out – to look after each other, report suspicious behaviour and make our nightlife safer for all.

Eyes Out for All. Always.

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Dilip Kuner is a NCTJ-trained journalist whose first job was on the Folkestone Herald as a trainee in 1988. He worked up the ladder to be chief reporter and sub editor on the Hastings Observer and later news editor on the Bridlington Free Press. At the time of the first Gulf War he started working for the Sunday Mirror, covering news stories as diverse as Mick Jagger’s wedding to Jerry Hall (a scoop gleaned at the bar at Heathrow Airport) to massive rent rises at the ‘feudal village’ of Princess Diana’s childhood home of Althorp Park. In 1994 he decided to move to Spain with his girlfriend (now wife) and brought up three children here. He initially worked in restaurants with his father, before rejoining the media world in 2013, working in the local press before becoming a copywriter for international firms including Accenture, as well as within a well-known local marketing agency. He joined the Olive Press as a self-employed journalist during the pandemic lock-down, becoming news editor a few months later. Since then he has overseen the news desk and production of all six print editions of the Olive Press and had stories published in UK national newspapers and appeared on Sky News.

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