Encourages off the street rooms so they can be independent from pimps
25 February 2006
MADRID - Is prostitution a form of slavery and sexual violence, a job like any other, or just an unavoidable human phenomenon? A Europe-wide debate has reached Spain, dubbed “Europe’s brothel”, where a parliamentary commission has been established to study possible approaches to prostitution after the northeastern region of Catalonia made controversial plans to regulate it. Prostitution is booming in Spain, where up to 400,000 women are estimated to be sex workers. A 2003 study said a quarter of men aged between 18 and 49 years had bought their services.
Spain has about 1,000 roadside brothels known as “clubs”, but prostitutes also look for clients on the streets, in parks, even parking lots and industrial areas. “The proliferation of prostitution in recent years has led to a situation in which we can find it everywhere,” said Catalan regional interior minister Montserrat Tura. Voluntary prostitution is not a crime in Spain, but pimping and coercion are.
Spain’s relatively lax prostitution laws and a late 1990s economic boom have helped to turn it into one of the top international centres for the trade, drawing prostitution rings and sex tourists, according to press reports.
Because prostitution is not illegal per se, Madrid authorities trying to reduce it have found no other way than making traffic police harass motorists who pick up prostitutes in certain neighbourhoods and the Casa de Campo Park.
Such measures usually just prompt prostitutes to move elsewhere, and Catalonia now intends to try a novel approach. The region is making plans to remove prostitutes from the streets to indoors, turning them into businesswomen running their own premises or hiring rooms. The arrangement would increase prostitutes’ independence from pimps and allow the authorities to watch over the hygiene and other conditions in brothels, the rationale goes.
Police in the Catalan capital Barcelona have already started imposing fines of up to 750 euros (890 dollars) on prostitutes or their clients in an attempt to chase them from the streets.
Yet the Woman’s Institute, an organ dependent on the central government, blasted the Catalan plan, saying prostitution was a “degrading” practice “incompatible with democratic values” and that Catalonia did not have the authority to regulate it independently. Feminists and trade unions are divided between the Dutch approach of clearly legalizing prostitution and the Swedish approach of trying to eliminate it by penalizing the clients. Those supporting legalization say prostitutes have the right to do what they like with their bodies, in the same way as a woman may decide to have an abortion. Opponents say prostitution is based on the same kind of disregard for women as domestic violence.
One of the opponents’ main arguments is that around 80 per cent of prostitutes working in Spain are immigrants, many of them illegal, from Latin America, Eastern Europe and Africa. There is little doubt that many of the foreign prostitutes have been coerced into the trade by criminals who have lured them to Spain with false promises of other jobs. In 2004, police freed 1,700 women who had been forced to work as prostitutes in brothels, flats or on the street. Such women may literally become prisoners of their pimps who take most of their income, keep them subservient with violence and threats, and may sell them from one brothel to another.
Yet there is also evidence that some immigrant prostitutes practice the trade voluntarily to multiply their meagre incomes as house servants and to send money to their families at home. “I don’t like this life, I would prefer to clean the streets, but how much would I then earn?” one Madrid prostitute said.
Source: http://www.khaleejtimes.com
I note this link to zillions of escorts, brothels, strip clubs in Spain: http://travelsexguide.tv/spain.htm Some even have options to read them in English
25 February 2006
MADRID - Is prostitution a form of slavery and sexual violence, a job like any other, or just an unavoidable human phenomenon? A Europe-wide debate has reached Spain, dubbed “Europe’s brothel”, where a parliamentary commission has been established to study possible approaches to prostitution after the northeastern region of Catalonia made controversial plans to regulate it. Prostitution is booming in Spain, where up to 400,000 women are estimated to be sex workers. A 2003 study said a quarter of men aged between 18 and 49 years had bought their services.
Spain has about 1,000 roadside brothels known as “clubs”, but prostitutes also look for clients on the streets, in parks, even parking lots and industrial areas. “The proliferation of prostitution in recent years has led to a situation in which we can find it everywhere,” said Catalan regional interior minister Montserrat Tura. Voluntary prostitution is not a crime in Spain, but pimping and coercion are.
Spain’s relatively lax prostitution laws and a late 1990s economic boom have helped to turn it into one of the top international centres for the trade, drawing prostitution rings and sex tourists, according to press reports.
Because prostitution is not illegal per se, Madrid authorities trying to reduce it have found no other way than making traffic police harass motorists who pick up prostitutes in certain neighbourhoods and the Casa de Campo Park.
Such measures usually just prompt prostitutes to move elsewhere, and Catalonia now intends to try a novel approach. The region is making plans to remove prostitutes from the streets to indoors, turning them into businesswomen running their own premises or hiring rooms. The arrangement would increase prostitutes’ independence from pimps and allow the authorities to watch over the hygiene and other conditions in brothels, the rationale goes.
Police in the Catalan capital Barcelona have already started imposing fines of up to 750 euros (890 dollars) on prostitutes or their clients in an attempt to chase them from the streets.
Yet the Woman’s Institute, an organ dependent on the central government, blasted the Catalan plan, saying prostitution was a “degrading” practice “incompatible with democratic values” and that Catalonia did not have the authority to regulate it independently. Feminists and trade unions are divided between the Dutch approach of clearly legalizing prostitution and the Swedish approach of trying to eliminate it by penalizing the clients. Those supporting legalization say prostitutes have the right to do what they like with their bodies, in the same way as a woman may decide to have an abortion. Opponents say prostitution is based on the same kind of disregard for women as domestic violence.
One of the opponents’ main arguments is that around 80 per cent of prostitutes working in Spain are immigrants, many of them illegal, from Latin America, Eastern Europe and Africa. There is little doubt that many of the foreign prostitutes have been coerced into the trade by criminals who have lured them to Spain with false promises of other jobs. In 2004, police freed 1,700 women who had been forced to work as prostitutes in brothels, flats or on the street. Such women may literally become prisoners of their pimps who take most of their income, keep them subservient with violence and threats, and may sell them from one brothel to another.
Yet there is also evidence that some immigrant prostitutes practice the trade voluntarily to multiply their meagre incomes as house servants and to send money to their families at home. “I don’t like this life, I would prefer to clean the streets, but how much would I then earn?” one Madrid prostitute said.
Source: http://www.khaleejtimes.com
I note this link to zillions of escorts, brothels, strip clubs in Spain: http://travelsexguide.tv/spain.htm Some even have options to read them in English
