Spanish police have investigated a woman found with a suitcase filled with 15 pangolin carcasses flying into Madrid last week.
Civil Guard officers made the shocking discovery during customs checks on passengers arriving from Addis Ababa in Ethiopia last Monday.
An X-ray scan of the suitcase at Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas Airport flagged abnormalities, found to be tiny pangolin bodies wrapped in plastic and weighing a total of 40kg.
The Civil Guard told The Independent on Thursday that a 60-year-old woman had been investigated as the alleged perpetrator of what was described as a “crime against wildlife”.
The pangolin bodies were sent to a national body regulating the international trade of protected species for study and assessment, the agency said.
“The illegal trafficking of protected species constitutes a serious threat to biodiversity and may be punished with prison sentences and fines, in accordance with the provisions of the Penal Code,” a statement read.
Pangolins are the world’s most trafficked mammal, primarily poached for their scales and meat. Demand from China is believed to drive global trade.
The scales are in high demand across Asia due to the unproven belief that they cure a range of ailments when made into traditional medicine. In some parts of east Asia, their foetuses are believed to be an aphrodisiac.
Pangolins are protected under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), an international agreement between governments to which Spain is a party.
More than half a million were seized in anti-trafficking operations between 2016 and 2024, according to a report last year by CITES.
The humble pangolin was also suspected of playing the role of intermediary for the transmission of the Covid-19 virus.
Researchers argued that Guangdong Pangolins may have been intermediate hosts that adapted SARS-CoV-2 and “represented a significant evolutionary link in the path of transmission”.
While some reports indicate a downward trend in pangolin trafficking since the pandemic, they are still being poached at an alarming rate across parts of Africa, according to conservationists.