Spanish authorities have dismantled a major industrial operation in Catalonia that was producing tens of thousands of litres of counterfeit perfume, mimicking around 50 luxury brands and distributing them across Europe via France, officials said on Tuesday.
The Spanish Ministry of Finance, which oversees customs enforcement via the Agencia Tributaria, Spain’s Tax Agency, said the site was ‘the largest counterfeit perfume factory in Europe to date’.
In the operation to date, seven people have been arrested and 11 others are under investigation for belonging to a criminal organisation, smuggling and infringement of industrial property. The probe is still ongoing and further arrests remain possible, the ministry said in a statement.
Although the trafficking network was first detected in October, arrests and searches were carried out on 8 February as part of a coordinated large-scale operation involving Spanish and French customs authorities along with the Catalan police, the Mossos d’Esquadra.
More than 1.2 million counterfeit items were seized across three warehouses in Arbúcies, near Girona (Catalonia), close to the French border. Based on the retail prices of genuine products, the haul was valued at over €94 million.
According to the ministry, the factory operated ‘seven production lines with a potential capacity estimated at four million bottles per year’ and held ‘raw materials for the manufacture of 150,000 litres of the different fragrances’.
Authorities said the operation was highly organised, with dedicated facilities for storage, labelling and packaging, and equipped with all the machinery needed for large-scale production.
Customs agents seized more than 850,000 fake perfumes at one warehouse and a further 350,000 units at another site.
The investigation was triggered after French customs intercepted several thousand bottles falsely labelled as ‘very fragile’. They alerted their Spanish counterparts, prompting surveillance operations that exposed trafficking routes into France and other European countries, using trucks and vans – many of them registered in Romania.
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Desmantellem amb Vigilància Duanera de l’Agència Tributària una xarxa de fabricació de perfums falsificats i tràfic internacional a gran escala amb seu a Catalunya.
— Mossos (@mossos) February 17, 2026
🚨Intervenim 1,2 milions de perfums i 150.000 litres de matèria primera amb un valor de més de 90 milions d’euros. pic.twitter.com/T8fRX4su7M
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