The Spanish government is proposing a spate of new legal measures to tackle prostitution. These include penalizing clients who solicit for sex and punishing landlords who make properties available to sex workers.
Further measures would also look to prosecute traffickers under existing gender violence laws, and most importantly, decriminalizing the victims themselves, who "will not be considered guilty in any case and consequently will not be sanctioned," according to a page government proposal reportedly seen by Spanish daily El Pais.
Sex work is tolerated in Spain — neither illegal nor regulated — but Prime Minister Sanchez came to power in June with a strongly feminist agenda and promising to fight the exploitation of women. There are however approximately fifty municipal ordinances that pursue prostitution at a local level. Some of them, like the one in Seville, only punish the client, according to El Pais' report.
The new moves to tackle prostitution aim to abolish the practice, according to El Pais. This could prove to be a challenge, given that some estimates suggest 39 per cent of Spaniards have paid for sex at some point in their life.
Estimates for how much the sex industry generates in Spain and how many people are employed, mostly against their own will, are staggering. According to an earlier report by rival daily El Mundo, there are approximately , women active as sex workers in Spain, approximately three times the total number of dentists in the country.
