Prostitution in Spain is legal, but not regulated. Pimping is illegal, an activity that increasingly involves international gangs controlling women and moving them around Spain, and Europe. The police have made some progress in breaking up these gangs, but admit that they lack the resources to tackle the problem properly.
In some regions, notably Catalonia, municipal authorities have taken steps to prevent prostitutes from working on the street, fining them and their clients for public order offenses. La Jonquera, the border town between Catalonia and France, has become a huge center for prostitution, attracting men from France, along with the gangs who traffic prostitutes. To circumvent legislation on pimping, it is registered as a hotel, and the women who work there are charged around 70 euros a night for a room and board.
Prostitution has long been tolerated in Spain; even under the military regime of General Franco. Reliable figures are hard to come by, but it is estimated that between , and , women now work as prostitutes in Spain, most of them controlled by mafias.
In , Congress rejected a move to regulate or ban prostitution on the grounds that it was near impossible to distinguish between people-trafficking and prostitution. Meanwhile, women continue to sell themselves on the streets. Nieto says that the majority of women working as prostitutes do not do so voluntarily, but are controlled by mafias.
She says that simply imposing fines on women, or the gangs that control them, is a waste of time. She adds that a lot of the fines being imposed are probably not even legal. At the same time, she argues that reaching consensus would be very difficult as the law stands. It would be against Article 15 of the Constitution regarding the principle of the moral and physical well-being of the individual.
