Sánchez faces tough battle to end Spain’s €3.7B sex industry

MADRID — Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez faces a tough challenge to follow through on a pledge to overhaul Spain’s prostitution laws with the ultimate aim of eradicating the country’s €3.7 billion sex business.

At his Socialist Workers’ Party’s (PSOE) national convention earlier this month, Sánchez won support for his plan to “push ahead with the abolition of prostitution, which enslaves women in our country.”

However, imposing a ban will be difficult in a country that has become one of the world’s biggest sex industry hubs. Many in Spain don’t see abolition as a viable solution.

“When something is prohibited, mafias emerge,” cautioned Conxa Borrell, secretary general of OTRAS, the country’s only labor union representing sex workers.

Attempts to eliminate prostitution will only push an already marginalized industry further underground, she warns. “When something is illegal, there’s always someone who will try and make money out of it.”

Spain loosened legislation criminalizing prostitution in 1995, aiming to make the sex trade easier to regulate. Since then, the industry has thrived, drawing significant custom from over the border in France, which has much tougher rules. 

In 2016, the United Nations estimated Spain’s sex industry was worth €3.7 billion. It is believed around 300,000 women work in it. Another U.N. report estimated that 39 percent of Spanish men had paid for sex in their lifetime, much more than in most European countries.

Such statistics have hardened political resolve to eliminate the sex industry.

“We need a model that deals with the terrible Spanish reality,” Laura Berja, PSOE’s parliamentary spokeswoman on equality, told POLITICO. “We are the biggest consumer of prostitution in Europe and the third biggest in the world.”

Laws controlling prostitution do exist in Spain. Pimping is illegal and, under a 2015 law, fines can be slapped on those who solicit sex from a vehicle, although the sanction is rarely applied.

The government’s draft Sexual Freedom Law, which parliament is due to debate in the coming weeks, includes measures to clamp down further on pimping by going after those who “use a property or venue to facilitate the sexual exploitation of another person.”

Calls for an overhaul of prostitution laws are amplified by the plight of high numbers of foreign women trafficked into the sex trade.

“Eighty percent of women who work in prostitution in Spain do so under coercion after being tricked in their countries of origin by criminal gangs who are dedicated to trafficking human beings,” the national police estimate.

PSOE appears not to support claims from some sectors that changes to immigration laws are needed for any reform of the sex trade to be effective. 

Instead, the governing party’s draft proposal envisages an “all-encompassing law for the abolition of prostitution” to be put to parliament before the end of the current legislature, scheduled for 2023.

Rocío Mora, director of APRAMP, an organization campaigning against the sexual exploitation of women, welcomed Sánchez’s announcement. “Two fundamental things are needed in order to stop this: that all forms of pimping be penalized and the demand for paid sex be tackled with severity,” she said. 

Although PSOE has yet to release details of the planned legislation, it is expected to include a new fine system for those who pay for sex, along with heavier sanctions for pimps and brothel owners.

Mora praised recent precedents for the abolitionist approach in countries such as Norway, Sweden and France. In 2016, France criminalized the purchase of sex, while bolstering the fight against trafficking and providing an “exit program” for sex workers.

“We have studied the French model and we support a lot of the abolitionist measures that their legislation includes,” said PSOE’s Berja.

The current disparity in legislation between Spain and its neighbor to the north helps explain why so many French men head down to the frontier town of La Jonquera. 

The Catalan town is home to what is reportedly the largest brothel in Europe. Roads crossing nearby countryside are frequently lined with scantily dressed women plying for trade from curb-crawling motorists from over the border. A former mayor despairingly described La Jonquera as “the bordello of France.” 

However, the Socialists’ plan faces criticism from those who advocate increased regulation instead of abolition. 

Borrell, from the sex workers’ union, takes a dim view of the French model. She points to a spate of violent deaths of prostitutes in Paris’ Bois du Boulogne park as proof that the approach has backfired. Borrell also takes issue with the supposedly feminist nature of the abolitionist argument.

“In what way is putting out of work the supposed 300,000 women who say they are in prostitution feminist?” she asked, complaining that the PSOE has so far not consulted with workers in the sex industry.

Sánchez also faces dissent closer to home. Unidas Podemos (UP), the hard-left junior partner in the Socialist-led government, is divided between abolitionists and those seeking to better regulate prostitution. 

Equality Minister Irene Montero, from UP, says the solution is getting tougher on the “pimping industry” and has complained targeting prostitutes’ clients doesn’t work. “We have the possibility to fine clients … that has not reduced the number of johns.” 

Prostitution risks becoming another area of dispute between PSOE and UP, who have already tussled over gender and sexual equality issues.

With UP divided, Sánchez’s Socialists may see a chance to seize the initiative on a big social issue, albeit at the risk of antagonizing their coalition partners.

While the left is split, it could be the political right that ensures the initiative gets through parliament. 

PSOE and the conservative Popular Party (PP) rarely see eye-to-eye but the two have been able to form a consensus on gender violence, signing off on a cross-party “state pact” on the issue in 2017.

The far-right Vox party has been scathing in its opposition to the abolition proposal, saying it is “like issuing a law banning hunger,” but the PP has kept relatively quiet, suggesting it could end up backing the initiative.