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Madrid (AFP)

One of Spain's most-wanted drug traffickers was arrested on Wednesday after seeming to taunt police by appearing in a reggaeton music video, a police spokesman told AFP.

Francisco Tejon, the leader of the "Los Castanas" clan, was "arrested today at La Linea de la Concepcion," a southern city near the border with Gibraltar, the spokesman said.

According to police, Tejon runs a major hashish trafficking network in the southern region of Andalusia with his brother Antonio, who was arrested in June.

The two brothers had previously escaped a police operation in late 2016 that resulted in the arrest of 30 suspected members of their gang.

Francisco Tejon recently came back to the police's attention by making a smiling cameo in a music video of reggaeton singer Clase-A.

In the video, Tejon gets out of a Bentley, enters a house filled with bikini-clad women around a swimming pool and ends up in a room where more scantily clad women are waiting for him.

The video sparked controversy when it was posted on social media and the singer has since taken it down from YouTube.

It "shows the lack of respect (drug traffickers) have for the security forces," Jose Encinas of the AUGC Guardia Civil association told AFP.

Drug traffickers are operating increasingly in the open in this part of Andalusia, which has high unemployment. They land shipments of drugs on beaches in broad daylight and physically attack police officers.

La Linea de la Concepcion is in Cadiz province, the entry point for 40 percent of the drugs smuggled into Spain, according to the interior ministry.

Police unions have said that 30 drug trafficking groups with more than 3,000 members operate in the province -- just 15 kilometres (nine miles) from Morocco's northern coast.

© 2018 AFP