Spain Looks at Human Trafficking Side of Prostitution

MADRID - Adebi works in the shadows on La Rambla, Barcelona's famous boulevard. 

In normal times, she tries to attract tourists or locals who are out for a night out on the city. 

The 36-year-old has lived in Spain for 10 years but when she arrived in her adopted home from Nigeria, prostitution was hardly what she had in mind. 

“I wanted to come here and do domestic work, you know, send money back home. It has not been like that,” she told VOA. 

Adebi, who did not want to use her real name, is like many other women who have been tricked into prostitution by well-organized sex trafficking gangs, who demand that the women pay off a debt by selling themselves for sex. 

Prostitution has boomed in Spain since decriminalizing the practice in 1995. 

The country became known as the brothel of Europe after a 2011 United Nations report said it was the third biggest capital of the sex trade after Thailand and Puerto Rico. 

The sex trade is worth $25 billion per year and about 500,000 people work in unlicensed brothels, according to data from Eurostat, the European Union Statistics agency.  

About 80% of these women are victims of sex traffickers, say Spanish National Police officials. 

New legislation 

Now, Spain's leftist coalition government wants to ban prostitution by bringing in a new law that would attempt to penalize anyone profiting from the sex trade. 

“We are on the right path, which has to end in national legislation against prostitution and trafficking, which says that our sexuality is available to men that we are a commodity which is bought and sold,” said Spanish Deputy Prime Minister Carmen Calvo last week. 

“There is trafficking because there is prostitution; if there is no prostitution there is no trafficking. We are abolitionists.” 

Prostitution occupies something of a legal limbo in Spain; selling yourself for sex is not illegal but profiting from it is. 

According to Spanish law, sex trafficking is when one person moves, detains or transports someone else for the purpose of profiting from their prostitution using fraud, force or coercion. 

Previous attempts to bring in a national law have floundered because political parties could not agree. 

Calvo has the support of the far-left Unidas Podemos party, the junior partner in the coalition government, but seeks to win over the opposition conservative People's Party and regional parties. 

More harm than good? 

Nacho Pardo, a spokesman for the Committee to Support Sex Workers, CATS, believes banning prostitution will harm the very people it is designed to help. 

“This will not eradicate prostitution. It will not offer people working in prostitution and it will help the mafias in the same way as happened in the US when prohibited alcohol,” he told VOA in a telephone interview.  “I think it will be catastrophic.” 

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CATS helps about 2,000 prostitutes in southeastern Spain each year, of which about 10% were victims of sex trafficking, says Pardo. 

He said many women, men and transsexuals from Africa and South America, became involved in the sex trade in Spain because sex traffickers insisted they pay off debts.  The traffickers demand payment for the cost of smuggling the sex workers and finding them work, but advocates say the alleged debts in reality amount to swindling and extortion.  

Nigerian women form the largest group of Africans who operate in Spain, Pardo said. Romanians form the largest group of foreign prostitutes in Spain, followed by women from the Dominican Republic and Colombia. 

“Most feel deep shame about being involved in the sex trade,” he said. 

Rocío Mora, who has been campaigning against sex trafficking for three decades, is the director of Apramp, which helps protect, help and reintegration women who are in prostitution. 

She says her team sees almost 300 women per day who are victims of sex trafficking. 

“Since 1985 we have been calling for abolition of prostitution. In a country which believes in the state of law, no person should be sold for their body,” she told VOA. "There is now a need for a comprehensive law that criminalizes those who profit from what is a form of violence against women." 

Back on the streets of Barcelona, Adebi says all women were forced to have sex with clients, often under threat. 

She says some Nigerian women were told they had run up debts of up to $60,000 but despite plying their trade for years, they never worked it off. 

“Women are fined for being late, not looking good, buying cigarettes from a place which is not the sex club they are working in, anything,” she says. 

“That whole film with Richard Gere was a myth. There is no such thing as Pretty Woman.” 

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MADRID - In Torrecilla de la Abadesa, it was a poignant day when Ángela López left the village school and its doors were locked for the last time. 

The 12-year-old must move to a larger school and her teacher Laura Velicia no longer has any other pupils to teach. 

"It was an emotional moment. You have a close relationship when you teach someone one on one," Velicia told VOA.  

The scene playing out in this Spanish village, which has only 289 inhabitants, is becoming a common one, as rural depopulation eats into the fabric of Spanish society. Five rural regions that make up 53% of Spain now have only 15% of its population, according to the National Statistics Office. 

Over the past 50 years, Spain's countryside has lost 28% of its population and are now known as la España vacia — or empty Spain. 

In a bid to redress decades of rural decline, Spain's leftist government unveiled an $11.9 billion plan this week, using funds the European Union has earmarked for population regeneration.   The plan consists of 130 measures to try to redress this demographic challenge and guarantee equality of opportunity throughout the country. 

“Working to recover equal opportunities for the rights of people throughout the territory is key,” Teresa Ribera, the Minister for Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge, told a press conference. 

Ribera said in Spain there are 6,800 villages with less than 5,000 inhabitants, many of these without the limit of 12.5 inhabitants per square kilometer. 

These villages had a combined population of 5.7 million  — making up about 8 % of the total population of 47 million. 

The government aid package involves extending the 5G telephone network across Spain, the development of technologically smart cities in rural areas and regional innovation centers. 

Extra help will also be given to the elderly in rural areas as well as help for women and young people to find jobs. 

Neglected heartland  

Spain's emptying rural interior has become a major political issue, highlighting disillusion with the country's political system among rural voters who for years have felt neglected by those in power.  

Teruel — one of the provinces that has suffered a lack of hospitals, schools, internet connectivity, training and jobs — campaigners formed a political party named Teruel Existe (Teruel Exists) that won a seat in national parliament in the 2019 general election. 

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez depended on the MP for Teruel Existe along with other parties to form a coalition government with the far-left Unidas Podemos party. 

Emboldened by the political success of Teruel, residents of the central region of Soria are now pushing for concessions from Madrid. 

A mountainous region which largely depends on agriculture, tourism and work within the civil service, Soria has the lowest population density in the country at 8.6 people per square kilometer. 

Many villages have died out already. Others have only a few elderly residents. Children are scarce and all travel to school on a bus to sit in classes where ages are mixed. 

“The politicians have neglected us for years,” Carlos Vallejo, spokesman of Soria Ya, a campaign group, told VOA. 

“We want three things — better infrastructure like highways, better services like more hospitals as we only have one at the moment which has been a real strain during the COVID-19 pandemic and better connectivity as Wi-Fi reception is not good in some parts of Soria.” 

No real solutions 

Until now schemes to try to attract immigrants to come and live in dying rural villages have been started in Soria as in other regions with varying success. 

In other areas, builders have started schemes to reform disused buildings and then sell them off. 

Alejandro Macarrón Larumbe, an expert in rural demographics, knows from personal experience how the Spanish countryside is in decline. 

His great-grandfather Juan Macarrón Despierto left his village of Valdanzo in Soria between 1880 and 1890 to seek work in Madrid. Then the village's population was about 500, but in the 2010 census  this had fallen to only 55. 

Macarrón, who heads the Demographic Renaissance Foundation, said the government must address practical problems of connectivity with poor wi-fi, infrastructure and amenities. 

“However, the main problem is the falling fertility levels both in the rural as well as the urban areas. More people are dying than being born. But when families are leaving rural areas, this affects these areas more,” Macarrón said in an interview with VOA. 

“This is what politicians should be addressing. It is not an easy problem to address but it is like cancer — if you do not do anything about it then it just gets worse.” 

Spain's fertility rate for 2020 was 1.366 children per woman compared with 2.68 in 1950, according to the Spanish National Statistics Office.