British villains have been joined by their Irish counterparts

You can run – but you can't hide from the gunmen on Spain's Costa del Crime | UK news | The Observer: "British villains have been joined by their Irish counterparts, partly as a result of the Irish authorities' increased activity in hunting down criminal assets. Last month Christy Kinahan, from Dublin, named by the Garda as a major player in drugs and arms, was arrested at his apartment near Marbella, in a co-ordinated series of raids across Europe that saw 11 properties in Spain turned over. There is also a powerful eastern European criminal presence: Russian, Romanian, Bulgarian, Albanian. Simultaneously, the Galician coast in the north-west of the country became the European gateway for the Latin American cocaine trade. Spain now has the highest percentage of cocaine use in Europe.
The 2001 film Sexy Beast epitomises the tanned and complacent British villain in Spain. It was preceded on the screen in 1984 by Stephen Frears's The Hit, in which Terence Stamp played a supergrass on the run from his former colleagues, and followed in 2005 by the less celebrated The Business. Danny Smith, remembered now with flowers to 'Tall Dan' outside the lounge, may have had only a walk-on part in the latest Costa drama, but he will not be the last young Briton to slump to a barroom floor with a bullet in his head."

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