Spanish Guardia Civil officers raided Dr. Fuentes' Madrid clinic on Calle Zurbano, seizing more than 200 bags of stored blood labelled with athlete codenames alongside EPO, centrifuges, and transfusion equipment — direct physical evidence of a functioning blood-doping operation.

Handwriting analysis, financial records, and athlete admissions linked the codenames on the blood bags to approximately 50 professional cyclists. Codenames such as 'Hijo Rudicio' (linked to Jan Ullrich) and 'Valv. Piti' (linked to Alejandro Valverde) were identified through forensic analysis.

Ivan Basso was banned for two years by the Court of Arbitration for Sport in 2007 after admitting to 'attempted doping' in connection with Operación Puerto — acknowledging he had made arrangements with Fuentes but claiming no transfusion had taken place.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport banned Valverde for two years (2010-2012) after DNA analysis connected blood samples from the seized bags to him. The DNA link provided direct forensic evidence of his participation in the blood-doping programme.

Ullrich was dismissed by the T-Mobile cycling team immediately after the raid. He retired shortly thereafter. In a 2013 interview and in subsequent public statements he acknowledged doping, including participation in the Fuentes programme.

Eufemiano Fuentes received a one-year suspended sentence from the Spanish court on public health grounds. The conviction confirmed he had operated a prohibited doping service; the suspended nature of the sentence reflected the limitations of Spanish public health law as applied to anti-doping violations.

Judge Santamaría's 2013 order to destroy the blood bags before athlete identification was overturned by the Audiencia Provincial of Madrid in 2016. By then most bags had been destroyed or degraded. The destruction substantially reduced the scope of possible athlete identification.

Both the World Anti-Doping Agency and the Union Cycliste Internationale filed formal appeals and complaints about the Spanish court's handling of the blood bags and the destruction order. Their intervention confirmed the international sporting community's view of the evidence's significance.

The Audiencia Provincial's 2013 ruling that Fuentes's blood bags should be destroyed — rather than transferred to sports authorities — rested on Spanish data-protection and medical-privacy statutes. The court found that using medical samples for non-criminal sporting purposes exceeded the scope of the criminal investigation. While anti-doping advocates criticized the outcome, framing it as a conspiracy ignores that the ruling reflected a genuine legal tension between criminal-process limitations and sports-authority jurisdiction, not coordinated suppression of evidence.

Dr. Eufemiano Fuentes testified and subsequent reporting confirmed his blood-doping services were provided to athletes across football, athletics, tennis, and boxing — not exclusively cyclists. This breadth undermines a cycling-specific conspiracy framing and suggests a broader sports-culture phenomenon. The reluctance of Spanish authorities to pursue non-cycling clients reflected jurisdictional and political complexity, not evidence of a targeted cover-up protecting cycling institutions specifically.

Spanish Guardia Civil officers raided Dr. Fuentes' Madrid clinic on Calle Zurbano, seizing more than 200 bags of stored blood labelled with athlete codenames alongside EPO, centrifuges, and transfusion equipment — direct physical evidence of a functioning blood-doping operation.

Handwriting analysis, financial records, and athlete admissions linked the codenames on the blood bags to approximately 50 professional cyclists. Codenames such as 'Hijo Rudicio' (linked to Jan Ullrich) and 'Valv. Piti' (linked to Alejandro Valverde) were identified through forensic analysis.

Ivan Basso was banned for two years by the Court of Arbitration for Sport in 2007 after admitting to 'attempted doping' in connection with Operación Puerto — acknowledging he had made arrangements with Fuentes but claiming no transfusion had taken place.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport banned Valverde for two years (2010-2012) after DNA analysis connected blood samples from the seized bags to him. The DNA link provided direct forensic evidence of his participation in the blood-doping programme.

Ullrich was dismissed by the T-Mobile cycling team immediately after the raid. He retired shortly thereafter. In a 2013 interview and in subsequent public statements he acknowledged doping, including participation in the Fuentes programme.

Eufemiano Fuentes received a one-year suspended sentence from the Spanish court on public health grounds. The conviction confirmed he had operated a prohibited doping service; the suspended nature of the sentence reflected the limitations of Spanish public health law as applied to anti-doping violations.

Judge Santamaría's 2013 order to destroy the blood bags before athlete identification was overturned by the Audiencia Provincial of Madrid in 2016. By then most bags had been destroyed or degraded. The destruction substantially reduced the scope of possible athlete identification.

Both the World Anti-Doping Agency and the Union Cycliste Internationale filed formal appeals and complaints about the Spanish court's handling of the blood bags and the destruction order. Their intervention confirmed the international sporting community's view of the evidence's significance.

The Audiencia Provincial's 2013 ruling that Fuentes's blood bags should be destroyed — rather than transferred to sports authorities — rested on Spanish data-protection and medical-privacy statutes. The court found that using medical samples for non-criminal sporting purposes exceeded the scope of the criminal investigation. While anti-doping advocates criticized the outcome, framing it as a conspiracy ignores that the ruling reflected a genuine legal tension between criminal-process limitations and sports-authority jurisdiction, not coordinated suppression of evidence.

Dr. Eufemiano Fuentes testified and subsequent reporting confirmed his blood-doping services were provided to athletes across football, athletics, tennis, and boxing — not exclusively cyclists. This breadth undermines a cycling-specific conspiracy framing and suggests a broader sports-culture phenomenon. The reluctance of Spanish authorities to pursue non-cycling clients reflected jurisdictional and political complexity, not evidence of a targeted cover-up protecting cycling institutions specifically.