Netflix is releasing a documentary about the story that inspired one of its most successful series, Turn of the Tide. The show is based on the true story of Rabo de Peixe, a fishing community in the Azores that one day received a strange treasure from the sea: thousands of wrapped packages washing up on the beach.
Those fishermen had found a ton of cocaine. Now, Netflix has produced a documentary about this event, proving that the story is rich enough for a series, a documentary, and much more.
A Town Suspended in Time
There are places on the map that seem suspended in time, anchored to a reality dictated by geography, not the clock. The Azores, “nine islands lost in the middle of nowhere,” are one of those places. For centuries, their history has been one of isolation, poverty, storms, volcanoes, and earthquakes.
On the north coast of São Miguel, the largest island in the archipelago, lies Rabo de Peixe, one of the largest fishing communities in the Azores and, at the same time, one of the poorest municipalities in all of Portugal. Life here is a metaphor for its geography: wild, forgotten, and cruel. With a population of about 7,500 at the time, existence revolved around the whims of the Atlantic Ocean.
Artisanal fishing set the community’s rhythm. When the weather made it impossible to go out to sea, life would pause in “dead hours”—moments of inactivity spent on the edge of a concrete breakwater, thinking about how to escape that piece of inert land. It was a place where nothing ever happened. The very isolation that had forged their character and strong community bonds for generations would unexpectedly become their greatest vulnerability. The lack of exposure to the outside world meant the community had no cultural or psychological defenses against what was about to arrive. They lacked the basic knowledge to identify the danger, let alone its value.
The Unexpected Reward
It all started with a fisherman. A man from the humble village was the first to discover a large number of bales on the coast. Soon after, packages wrapped in plastic and rubber began appearing on the beaches, bobbing in the waves like a strange offering from the sea. In the town of Pilar da Bretanha, a man found a large mound covered in black plastic. Underneath, dozens of small packages contained a substance he thought was flour. He decided to call the police.
But not everyone did. As the news spread through the town like wildfire, a “frenzied treasure hunt” was unleashed. Dozens of people, from teenagers to the elderly, rushed to the shores. The initial reaction was not one of criminality but of curiosity and an opportunism born from endemic poverty. For a community whose survival depended on what the sea gave them, this seemed like a strange blessing. The ocean, their usual provider of sustenance, was now delivering an unknown white powder.
The White Plague: A Carnival of Misunderstandings
There was total and absolute ignorance about the nature of the substance. Cocaine, until then considered an “elite drug” and practically nonexistent on the island, was a foreign concept.
The collective memory of Rabo de Peixe is filled with scenes that border on the surreal: women allegedly breading mackerel with cocaine instead of flour, and middle-aged men adding it by the spoonful to their morning coffee, mistaking it for sugar. It has even been said that the drug was used to paint the lines on a soccer field. These stories, more than just sensational anecdotes, are a symbol of a deep and innocent tragedy.
What the community didn’t know was that this “flour” had a purity of over 80%, a potency far above what is usually found on the black market. This scientific fact explains the devastating medical crisis that followed.
The substance, a product valued at millions of euros on the international market, underwent a strange economic transformation on the island. Due to its abundance and the lack of a market to absorb it, its value was inverted. It ceased to be a high-priced commodity and became a substance for immediate consumption, almost free and, therefore, lethal.
Without an established market, the price became absurd. A small beer glass, filled to the brim with cocaine, was sold on the streets for the equivalent of just over 20 euros. People sold by volume, not weight—a practice unheard of in established drug markets that reveals a complete misunderstanding of the product. The main goal for many was to make money as quickly as possible, often by selling kilos to finance their own consumption. Several islanders became makeshift traffickers, transporting the cocaine across the island in milk cans, paint tins, and socks.
The Collapse
The consequences were not long in coming. The island’s hospitals were overwhelmed, on the brink of collapse, by an overdose epidemic. Doctors appeared on local television pleading with the population to put an end to the “madness.”
It was weeks of “panic, terror, and chaos.” Unofficial statistics, compiled by journalists and healthcare workers, point to some 20 deaths in just the three weeks after the drug arrived. The cases were extreme. It is said that one man hooked himself up to an IV of water and cocaine, staying in his house for days. Another user and a relative reportedly consumed more than a kilo in a month.
The event acted as a tragic experiment in social contagion. The news of the “treasure” spread through the community’s tight-knit social networks, sparking a collective search. In the same way, consumption patterns and the health crisis spread like a virus through a population with no immunity.
The Man with the Broken Rudder
The catalyst for this catastrophe was one man: Antonino Quinci, a Sicilian nicknamed “O Italiano” (“The Italian”). He was sailing a Sun Kiss 47 sailboat, about 14 meters long, on a journey that had begun in Venezuela. His orders were clear: transport the cocaine shipment to Spain, specifically to the Balearic Islands. His trip was part of the well-known “Atlantic Cocaine Route,” a path used by sailboats to transport narcotics from South America to Europe.
However, the Atlantic had other plans. A severe storm with hurricane-force winds battered the sailboat. The waves slammed the vessel violently, knocking down the mast and breaking the rudder. Adrift and without steering, Quinci found himself in a desperate situation. It was impossible to continue his journey, but it was also unfeasible to enter a port with a boat loaded to the brim with drugs.
In an improvised crisis meeting, he made a decision: hide the merchandise. He sailed to a grotto on the north coast of São Miguel, near Pilar da Bretanha, and there he unloaded the bales, securing them to the seabed with nets and chains. The entire disaster that would affect thousands of lives can be traced back to this single point of failure: a broken rudder in the middle of a storm.
Quinci’s plan was logical, but he underestimated the fury of the Azorean ocean. The very nature that defines the islands’ untamed character took it upon itself to undo his strategy. The force of the sea and winds broke the moorings and untangled the nets. The bales, freed from their underwater hiding place, were left at the mercy of the currents and wind, which pushed them inexorably toward the coast and the pier of Rabo de Peixe. One man’s plan was thwarted by forces he could not control.
The Hunt on an Island-Prison
The police found themselves fighting on two simultaneous fronts: on one hand, they were trying to confiscate every gram of cocaine circulating on the island; on the other, they were searching for the sailboat that had brought it. A total of 11 official drug seizures were registered, amounting to nearly 500 kilos.
The investigation made a significant breakthrough when, after exhaustive searches in the port of Ponta Delgada, the island’s capital, police found a small package hidden on a yacht. It was wrapped in a newspaper bearing the same name and date as the newspapers found in the bales on the beach. The lead was definitive.
Antonino Quinci was arrested without resistance. Those who saw him described him as a tall, imposing man with a sad expression, who seemed to feel terribly guilty. When inspectors explained how the island had become a “minefield” because of him, Quinci cooperated. He provided key information that led to the recovery of more drugs he had hidden in the north of the island. His character became more complex: he was not just a criminal, but a man who, once captured, seemed to understand the magnitude of the disaster he had caused.
While awaiting trial, Quinci staged one of the most surreal escapes in Portuguese police history. He scaled the wall of the Ponta Delgada prison and escaped. The authorities’ logic had been ironclad: “The island itself is a prison. No one escapes from jail on an island,” the police chief inspector had said. But Quinci did.
He was captured again weeks later, hiding in a barn or a stone shed in northeastern São Miguel. He was carrying 30 grams of cocaine and a fake passport. This episode cemented his legendary status. In a community where nothing ever happened, the story of the foreigner, the disaster, the capture, and the impossible escape provided a powerful narrative. Quinci became an almost mythical figure, not because his crime was approved of, but because his story was extraordinary. To this day, the purity of cocaine on the island is still measured against “the Italian’s” standard, a sign of how his name became etched into the local lexicon.
The Persistent Tide: Reality, Fiction, and Legacy
One of the biggest lingering mysteries is the actual amount of drugs. The official police story speaks of nearly 500 kilos of cocaine recovered in 11 different seizures. However, journalists and locals who lived through the events maintain that this figure is absurdly low. They argue that a sailboat like the Sun Kiss 47 could carry up to 3,000 kilos and that no one would risk crossing the Atlantic with only a small fraction of its cargo capacity. More recent investigations, such as one from a book that promises “the whole truth,” raise the amount to over 700 kilos. This fundamental discrepancy leaves open the question of the true scale of the event, suggesting it could be much larger than what was officially acknowledged.
The event created a lasting stigma for the town of Rabo de Peixe, a wound that reopens with every retelling of the story. The popular narrative was built on surreal anecdotes of cocaine being used as flour to fry fish or as sugar for coffee. While these stories capture the innocence and chaos of the moment, it remains unclear whether they literally happened or are part of a “collective memory” that simplifies a more complex and painful reality.
Voices have emerged to question this simplified narrative. Author Rúben Pacheco Correia, a native of the town, argues that his home was “unjustly associated” with the case. He emphasizes that although the story focuses almost exclusively on Rabo de Peixe, the cocaine first appeared near Pilar da Bretanha and spread along the entire north coast of São Miguel. The fact that the trafficker was only in the town for less than 24 hours fuels the perception that Rabo de Peixe was made a scapegoat for a problem that affected the entire island.
The legacy of the event is equally complex. It undeniably left a profound social impact, with addiction problems that persist decades later and the consolidation of the Azores as a stop on drug trafficking routes. However, some academic studies question whether the event had a statistically significant long-term impact on crime rates, challenging the narrative of a total social decline.
Even the figure of Antonino Quinci, “the Italian,” is surrounded by unanswered questions. Although his story as the captured trafficker who cooperated and then escaped is well known, the full extent of his connections remains a mystery. Recent investigations suggest the operation was much larger, with possible links to a Colombian cartel, adding another layer of intrigue to the story. This tension between the global narrative and the local reality is crucial to understanding the legacy of the event, which has evolved from lived experience to media folklore and, now, a modern reassessment.
The Documentary’s Mission
In this context of conflicting narratives, a new documentary emerges. Titled Turn of the Tide: The Surreal Story of Rabo de Peixe, it is a production by Portocabo Atlántico, directed by João Marques and written by Marcos Nine. Its stated purpose is to explore the incident through multiple perspectives, bringing together the testimonies of those involved and direct witnesses. The documentary seeks to tell the surreal true story that forever marked the lives of the inhabitants, in an attempt to go beyond the folklore and fictionalized drama to present a more human and complex truth. It represents a conscious effort to reclaim the story, wresting it from both sensationalism and stigma, in what has become a battle for control of the narrative.
A storm, a broken rudder, and half a ton of high-purity cocaine conspired to irrevocably alter the fate of a remote Atlantic island. The effects of that white tide were devastating and persisted for decades, leaving a scar on the collective memory of a community that never asked to be the protagonist of such an incredible story. The incident that began on the coast of the Azores in June of 2001 is the subject of the new documentary.
Turn of the Tide: The Surreal Story of Rabo de Peixe premieres on Netflix on October 17.
