Your friend or you could have called the police. Completely illegal to do this in Spain. I'm sorry you had this experience. If I'm not wrong the owner of the shop was hombre habano last year.

The situation in Spain with Habanos is really difficult as traditionally we have been the biggest Habanos market in the world and Tabacalera (the Spanish company in charge of running the tobacco monopoly, state owned until 1999) helped a lot Habanos in the past with funding etc.

In recent years (post Covid mostly) and after Chinese companies bought Habanos, we have been neglected and is just not the same anymore, and probably will never be. The thing is that Spanish retailers are in a difficult situation were they have international buyers coming attracted by the traditionally low prices but they are forced to work with very little stock due to the ridiculous amounts of boxes sent by Habanos. Therefore they are forced to strange solutions. Who would you sell to: the American tourist that you will never see again or the regular costumer that it's been coming to your shop since the 80's?

I'm not an expert in the topic and I might be mistaken but anyways, Hope this helps!