Officers watched an upmarket home for days in Sitges while the wanted 21-year-old inside never ventured beyond its surrounding garden. Then, amid concerns that guns or explosives could be inside, Spanish police entered. 

The garden was as far as the fugitive would go 

The search began in June 2025 through the European Network of Fugitive Active Search Teams (ENFAST), which allows specialist police units to exchange information and pursue wanted people across borders. After months of cooperation between Sweden and Spain, investigators traced the fugitive to Sitges, the affluent seaside town approximately 35 kilometres south-west of Barcelona. According to Spain’s Ministry of the Interior, he was living in a house in what police described as an upmarket neighbourhood. Officers placed the property under surveillance for several days and were able to view the suspect in the garden, but police said he did not venture beyond the grounds, apparently aware that Swedish authorities were pursuing him.

Investigators believed there was a possibility of finding firearms or explosives inside. Therefore entry and a search of the property were consequently authorised under a European Investigation Order, and officers arrested the man during the early hours of Saturday August 1. Authorities have not said whether any weapons or explosives were ultimately recovered from the house.

🚩 Detenido en #Sitges uno de los fugitivos más buscados de #Suecia

🔹 Presuntamente participó en 20 hechos criminales de extrema violencia para desestabilizar a grupos criminales rivales

🔹 Adiestraba a jóvenes reclutados para ejecutar ataques, entrenándolos en el uso de armas… pic.twitter.com/6mwVcQUrzj

— Policía Nacional (@policia) August 3, 2026

Why the Swedish media name Emin Muqa Kulic

Neither the Spanish nor Swedish authorities named the arrested man in their initial official statements. However, Swedish broadcasters SVT and TV4 have identified him as Emin Muqa Kulic, aged 21. Kulic had also appeared on the Europol-hosted EU Most Wanted website, where he was publicly listed as wanted by Sweden for attempted murder.

SVT describes Kulic as a senior figure in Stockholm’s Dalen network. The broadcaster says police have previously portrayed him as the alleged right-hand man of Mikael “Greken” Tenezos, another suspected senior network figure who was arrested in Mexico in October 2025.

The Swedish Prosecution Authority confirmed that the arrested 21-year-old had been detained in absentia since May 2025 on suspicion of offences including complicity in murder and attempted murder. The suspected crimes were committed during 2024, and several investigations remain under way. “We believe the man has been one of those directing young people to commit serious violent crimes in Sweden,” lead prosecutor Ida Arnell said in the official statement. 

Police allege young recruits were given weapons and explosives

Spanish investigators place the suspect’s alleged activities within a much broader campaign of violence. They claim he participated in approximately 20 extremely violent criminal incidents during 2024, including attacks in which members of rival criminal groups were killed. The alleged purpose was to destabilise competing groups and provoke further conflicts between them. According to the Spanish account, those involved used military-style weapons, long and short firearms and explosives. Investigators also accuse the suspect of training young people recruited to carry out organised attacks. Police allege that he instructed them in the use of firearms and explosives and supplied the equipment himself.

The figure of 20 incidents comes from Spanish police and is broader than the suspected offences specified publicly by Swedish prosecutors. There are not yet 20 proven crimes or convictions against Kulic.

Sweden’s National Council for Crime Prevention has documented how recruitment into criminal networks can begin at an early age, and its wider research found that recruiters were commonly aged between 15 and 20, while those targeted were often between 12 and 15. In some cases, recruitment developed in less than a day.

The villa’s reported connection to Jonas Falk

One of the most unusual parts of the arrest concerns the house itself. SVT reports, citing its own sources, that the Sitges property had previously been occupied by Jonas Falk, one of Sweden’s most widely known convicted criminals. Kulic allegedly remained there for an extended period after Falk was arrested. Spanish police, however, have not confirmed that account in full. Their statement says only that the fugitive was “closely linked” to the person known as the “Pablo Escobar of Sweden”. It does not yet identify Falk or establish who legally owned or rented the property.

The claimed connection emerged just days after Stockholm District Court convicted Falk of four exceptionally serious narcotics offences. On July 28, he received a sentence of nine years and two months over the handling of approximately 2.3 tonnes of cocaine between South America and Europe. His lawyer has said the conviction will be appealed.

Spain must now decide on Sweden’s request

Spain has repeatedly surfaced in Sweden’s hunt for wanted suspects. Swedish Police figures show that 31 Swedish fugitives had been arrested in Spain by July 9 this year. 

Across all countries, 165 people had been arrested on Swedish alerts during the same period, compared with 139 a year earlier. Swedish prosecutors have now issued a European Arrest Warrant requesting Kulic’s surrender. This is a judicial procedure between European Union countries, rather than a conventional diplomatic extradition process. A surrender decision should normally be reached within ten days if the arrested person consents or within 60 days if the request is contested. No hearing date, decision or confirmed timetable for Kulic’s transfer to Sweden has yet been announced.

Iznate is preparing for its 26th Día de la Uva Moscatel on Saturday, August 8, giving visitors a free taste of the grape that has shaped life in this corner of the Axarquia for centuries. From 7pm the whitewashed streets will fill with stalls offering local recipes prepared by residents, plus plenty of the sweet Moscatel fruit and wine that define the area.

More than 2,000 families across the Axarquia still work the Moscatel vines. In 2018 the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization recognised the traditional growing and sun-drying methods as a Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System, the first such award in Europe. The festival is the official start of the harvest season when many families head out to the fields for weeks of picking and drying the grapes that become the famous local raisins.

Free food trail and artisan market

Residents will be opening their kitchens for the evening giving everyone a taste of local tradition. Expect ajoblanco, gazpacho, arriera-style salads, potato omelettes, cured meats from the matanza and traditional sweets, all laid out free of charge along a route through the village. Fresh Moscatel grapes and the matching wine will be handed out too. A craft and local-produce market opens around 8pm, giving people the chance to pick up regional items while the food trail gets under way.

Music fills the air once the stalls are busy, keeping the atmosphere lively well into the night. The whole event forms the high point of Iznate’s summer cultural week and has held Provincial Tourist Interest status for more than two decades. Its roots stretch back to older gatherings that welcomed emigrants home each summer when work in the fields was scarce and many had left in search of work elsewhere.

Why the festival still matters

Moscatel has been grown here since at least the late 16th century, when the village already supplied merchants as far away as Madrid. Today the crop is still central to the landscape, the economy and the calendar of small towns throughout the Axarquia. The free food, the music and the chance to walk the decorated streets make the evening an easy outing for anyone living nearby who wants a proper dose of local flavour without the crowds of the coast.

Previous Euro Weekly News coverage of similar Axarquia grape celebrations can be found in the La Viñuela Feria de la Pasa report and the Competa Noche del Vino story. More on the wider Moscatel heritage appears in the international press trip piece. Official details are available on the Iznate town website and the Diputación de Malaga festivals page.

ONCE has posted record figures across Malaga province for 2025 after a decade of steady growth. Lottery ticket sales reached €201.5 million, up 5.16 per cent on the previous year and far ahead of Andalucia’s average. Of that total, €114.46 million returned to local players as prizes, the highest amount ever paid out here.

ONCE, Spain’s National Organisation of the Blind, raises funds through daily coupon draws and scratchcards sold by authorised vendors, many of them blind or with another disability. Roughly €56.80 of every €100 taken goes straight back in prizes; €32.10 covers sellers’ wages and running costs, and the remaining €11.10 supports charity, which in turn supports education, accessibility and inclusion for people who are blind or have serious visual impairment.

€18.67 million directed to social work in Malaga

Social investment in the province hit €18.67 million last year. Leonor Basallote, vice-president of the Territorial Council, was in Nerja to stress that behind every figure sit real people who benefit from the organisation’s programmes. Also, the model works because every euro earned is channelled into the social mission.

Nationally, the wider Social Group ONCE employs around 80,000 people and ranks as Spain’s third-largest non-public employer. Andalucia accounts for 16,558 of those jobs, with 3,445 based in Malaga province. Another 108 posts were added in 2025. The local sales network alone now employs 1,332 people, all of them with disabilities – the highest number recorded in recent years.

Biggest disability employer keeps expanding

Across the whole organisation, 58.9 per cent of staff have some form of disability, making it the world’s largest employer of disabled people. A further 32,000 non-disabled staff work there too, reflecting a deliberate push for inclusion and talent. Women make up 45% of the workforce. Parallel growth came from the three main arms of the group: national lottery sales rose 3.4% to €2.927 billion, Ilunion turnover climbed 9.6% to €1.443 billion, and Fundación ONCE secured €154.5 million for disability projects.

José Manuel Fernández, an ONCE member in Nerja, described the practical impact of the new “Estreno” neurological training app. Its nine games each target a different part of the brain and help users sharpen sensory perception. “We spend so much time exercising our bodies that we sometimes forget the mind,” he said, calling the app both fun and necessary.

Readers can find more on recent Costa del Sol lottery wins at Euro Weekly News’s Fuengirola €1m scratchcard story and local employment trends at Malaga’s job market rebound report. Official details on the games and social work appear at ONCE’s website and JuegosONCE.