RUBIO CHRIS
He’s called Rubio because of the blond hair and fair skin, which used to turn red in the searing Costa del Crime sunshine. The word means blond in Spanish. But Oldham-born Chris Lees is anything but a typical Brit in Spain. This 42-year-old entrepreneur has had his finger in a lot of pies, and he nearly paid for it with his life.
Chris first arrived in Fuengirola back in the mid-1980s. In those days, he explains, he was ‘nothing more than a daft kid ready to try his hand at anything. I was after an adventure, but I didn’t have a brass farthing to my name, so I started getting involved in some right dodgy capers.’ Chris soon found himself working as a tobacco smuggler, illegally importing Spain’s dirt-cheap cigarettes into the UK. ‘Back then it was a great way to earn a decent wedge,’ says Chris. ‘It wasn’t like drugs smuggling and most Customs guys turned a blind eye because they had more important things to worry about.’
As a tobacco smuggler, Chris found himself mixing with ‘some right dodgy geezers’ and he also worked from some bizarre locations. ‘There was one supermarket in Fuengirola where all the big Brit villains hung out in the canteen in the daytime,’ says Chris. ‘You could buy anything from an AK-47 rifle to a dodgy passport in that place. There was always some scumbag sitting supping a beer, ready to help.’ Being a tobacco smuggler brought Chris into contact with some major criminal faces and on a couple of occasions he upset a few of them.
‘I tend to be pretty straightforward, and a lot of them didn’t like that one bit. In the end I got forced out of the smuggling game and life became much more of a struggle.’
Chris quit Spain in the early-1990s and returned to the UK, but the lure of sunshine, easy money and easy women proved too strong. In 1998 he slipped back to Spain and his old haunts in Fuengirola. ‘That’s when my problems really kicked off. I should have stayed back in Britain, but I was addicted to that Spanish lifestyle. It seemed so much better than cold, bitter, grey England.’
Chris set up a combined restaurant and disco in Fuengirola; it was a roaring success. Word soon got around that he was making a lot of money and some of the local unsavoury characters decided they wanted a share of his profits. ‘A bunch of British crims turned up one night asking questions about me and saying that they’d heard there was a group of fellas going around Fuengirola, wrecking clubs. What they really meant was that they were going to trash my place unless I bunged them some protection money. Well, I wasn’t going to stand for that. So I told them all to fuck off, which didn’t go down too well. Next thing I know, the Spanish police are threatening to withdraw my licence.’ It was then that Chris Lees found out what a lonely place the Costa del Crime can be if you’re not in with the right people.
‘A few days later, I’m nicked by the police on suspicion of being involved in some kind of drugs ring. It was outrageous. The cops claimed that I had knowingly rented my house out to a bunch of cocaine smugglers and that I was part of their gang. The whole thing was a fit-up, and I immediately knew those Brit crims had grassed me up because I wouldn’t pay them protection money.’
Chris was flung into a notorious men’s prison north of Malaga, where he was locked up for almost a year before the police released him without charge. ‘It was a bad time. I kept insisting I was innocent, but so do most people in prison so no one was interested in listening to me. At one stage I thought I’d be sentenced to ten years when the detectives interrogated me and I refused to answer their questions.’ Chris was released in the summer of 2002 with no warning.
‘They just opened my cell one morning and said I was free to go. No apology, nothing.’ Chris was, by his own account, ‘a changed man. I didn’t trust anyone any more. I had a shorter temper and I was, quite frankly, very resentful at my treatment by the police and prison staff. The jail was a shithole and I found myself sharing cells with some right nutters. It was something I hope never happens to me again.’
Back in the real world, Chris soon discovered that most of his old mates in Fuengirola didn’t want to know him any more. ‘They all thought I’d grassed someone up in order to get released. People would abuse me in the street and I couldn’t walk into a bar without it going silent. It was a horrible feeling and I realised I had to get away and start afresh somewhere else.’
So Chris quit Spain and moved to Bristol where he had a few old friends. He set up a limousine-rental company, which is now highly successful, and has even managed to be elected a local councillor. ‘Prison taught me never to waste a moment. Since arriving back here I’ve started over and it’s been fantastic. I’ll never go back to live in Spain again, and whenever I talk to any friends over there they always sound either very bored or very broke – or both! The Costa del Sol rots people’s brains, if you know what I mean. It’s an evil place filled with nasty opportunists who’d quite happily stitch up their grannies given the chance. I’m better off out of there now.’