a quarter of males younger than 49 in Spain have paid for sex

the state-run National Statistics Institute show a quarter of males younger than 49 in Spain have paid for sex) is satisfied by a population of sex workers who are over 95 per cent extranjeras (of foreign nationality). These women, who are ‘owned’ by mafias here, are trafficked from all over the world - most commonly from Russia, Romania, Nigeria, Brazil and Colombia, with Romanian trafficking mafias becoming especially prolific. Spain is also a transit stop for victims en route to France, Germany and Portugal.
In 2005, a huge police operation in Andalucía and Extremadura discovered 54 Brazilian women who had been trafficked on false pretences and forced into prostitution on arrival. In this case, 11 Spaniards and three Brazilians were arrested and accused of trafficking.

sex slaves

women and girls are trafficked into the country by mafias who trap them in a form of debt bondage. Effectively sex slaves, they are forced into prostitution to pay back impossible debts which barely diminish. Traffickers have been known to hold children as ‘deposits’ until their mothers pay back what they supposedly owe.

Legal confusion regarding prostitution in Spain has created a very overt and burgeoning sex industry which draws in visitors from abroad with the neon signs of its motorway brothels. It is technically illegal to earn money by managing prostitutes, but prostitution itself is legal and brothels obtain hotel licenses in order to claim that they simply rent rooms to prostitutes. With legality has not come regulation, and many of Spain’s 2,000 or so clubs are controlled by mafia groups and worked by debt bonded immigrants.

brothels on the Costa del Sol

Following an investigation of brothels on the Costa del Sol over the past eighteen months, the National Police have arrested 150 people in Malaga province accused of sexual exploitation and other crimes relating to prostitution.