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PROSTITUTION

Spanish pimps offered girl’s virginity up for €5,000

Spanish police on Saturday announced they had smashed a high-end prostitution ring whose catalogue of services included offering the sale of an teenage girl's virginity.

Published: 11 March 2017 14:33 CET
Spanish pimps offered girl's virginity up for €5,000
Seven people were arrested in the sting. Photo: ipi6r/Flickr

Seven people were arrested in the sting and a 16-year-old girl, whose virginity had been offered up online for the price of €5,000, was freed, the police said in a statement.

The network, operating out of the southern resort city of Marbella, advertised the sale of the virginity of a woman who was 18 but looked much younger – but police said she was actually 16.

Authorities described a “perfectly organised” and lucrative network which used telephone operators to book services and taxi rides for prostitutes to hotels and the homes of “clients with a high financial standing”.

The network also used a specialised agency to help it optimise its visibility online when internet users searched for prostitution services.

PROSTITUTION

Spain’s top court reinstates first sex workers’ union

Spanish sex workers have the right to form their own union, the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday, overturning an earlier court decision ordering the dissolution of Spain's first such labour organisation.

Published: 2 June 2021 16:34 CEST
Spain's top court reinstates first sex workers' union
Photo: Oscar del Pozo/AFP

Known as OTRAS (or “the Sex Workers’ Organisation”), the union was discretely set up in August 2018 but was closed three months later by order of the National Court following an appeal by the government of Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez.

But following an appeal, the Supreme Court ruled in favour of OTRAS, saying that its statutes, which had triggered the initial legal challenge, were “in line with the law” and that sex workers “have the fundamental right to freedom of association and the right to form a union”.

In its November 2018 ruling, the National Court had argued that allowing the union to exist amounted to “recognising the act of procurement as lawful”.

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Contacted by AFP, the union did not wish to comment.

When it was founded, OTRAS received the green light from the labour ministry and its statutes were publicly registered in the official gazette the day before the government went into a summer recess.

But three weeks later, the government — which portrays itself as “feminist and in favour of the abolition of prostitution” according to Sanchez’s Twitter feed at the time — started legal moves against it.

In Spain, prostitution is neither legal nor illegal but it is tolerated.

Although it is not recognised as employment, there is a large number of licensed brothels throughout the country.

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