Clampdown on Street Walkers on the Ramblas (Barcelona)

About a week ago there were various reports from the local Adjuntamiento (town hall) in Barcelona about the political hot potato of prostitution on the Ramblas and how it should be handled. Obviously someone had made a bit of noise and now some poor overworked politician would have to drag his heels and be seen to do something.

Being the mega tourist destination that it is, Barcelona is worried that falling tourist numbers will soon hit the economy, whilst the whole game plan of Barcelona Tourism is switching to higher end tourism, looking to bury the drunken hen nights, the boisterous stag weekends and the sex tourism in the past.

So a few days ago there was a clamp down in certain high profile areas of the Ramblas in front of lots of cameras to show that they (local police and Adjuntamiento) are clamping down on the hookers. Well some of them. In a few places. Whilst the others around the corner carry on unhindered. And maybe tomorrow they continue in front of the police station as usual when the cameras have gone. Initially they appear to have moved to Glorias , Rambla de Catalunya and Diputacion for the moment so nothing has really been acheived and things just become harder to monitor.

Well anyway, they got some airtime and lots of column inches in the local press to show their dedication to cleaning up the Ramblas. I have no doubt there will be any reduction in street level prostitution around the Ramblas and yet again the powers that be fail to address the real issues and cash their chips in for a photo opportunity. 

Speaking of photo opportunities, a few punters have recently gained their 15 minutes of fame. See any faces (or body parts) that you recognize?

El Pais

Have you seen the whorehouse map for Barcelona yet?

Click here for the map of approx 100 knocking shops in barcelona.

Bookmark it on a PDA, Iphone, Blackberry etc and you can call up directions really easily as you're walking around town.

More cities later!

Find Whorehouses in Spain More Easily

Well after a long wait and lots of hard work from a few good friends we now have www.whichwhorehouse.com on a new server and a huge amout of code has been rewritten. You probably wont notice any difference but it now runs a lot smoother and now we can add new locations quicker, visitors can add locations easier and the reviews are much improved.

The only snag is that the URLs have changed a little so any bookmarks you have might not work and we guess that for a month the links that come up in google will be out of date :( nevermind, youll still hit the locations page, no big deal.

Click here for whorehouses and brothels in Barcelona, we have about 100 listed!

Click here to see the 70 or so brothels and whorehouses we have listed in Madrid.

Click here for the 20 or 30 brothels, whorehouses and massage parlours we know of in Valencia.

Terrassa has about 15 brothels we know of, click here to see them.

Sabadell brothels, whorehouses and puticlubs are listed here.

We need a hand finding more brothels in Bilbao, click here to see what we have already.

Zaragoza must have more brothels than we know about, if you find them let us know.

In general we need the locations of any whorehouses you find. Clicking through to our 'contribute' page lets you submit any details. Yes it makes you put an email and password in but thats just to stop the idiots and the bots from submitting junk. We would never dream of sending spam to your email and at the moment you dont even receive a confirmation email which leaves your inbox a bit lighter.

Any feedback on the page, submitting locations or writing reviews just pop us an email.

How to find CallGirls and Escorts in Spain

Well we've finally got the new Which CallGirl site up!

Currently we just have Escorts in Barcelona, Madrid and Lleida listed, and not too many either but now we're live we can start to bring more girls in.

The great thing about calling private escorts is that theres more chance of them genuinely being independant and not being exploited. Lets face it, if exploited girls are physically locked within some illegal brothel its because they would try and escape. Sending them out wouldnt be an option. Also the risk of other forms of exploitation are reduced when theyre not 'performing' under the watchful eye of a pimp.

We cant guarentee that 100% of the girls we will be listing are not being exploited in some way, thats never going to be possible, sadly. However if anyone suspects that theres something strange going on simply email us and we can check it out and either remove their listing or inform the authorities. However if the girls really are working for themselves then you can be sure that theyre earning a heck of a lot more than if they were in a club and presumably this would reflect in their service.

Surely must be better to pay a girl who has made the decision to work for herself than risk paying a pimp (or club owner) who has made the decision that the girl will work for him and his benefit? Not a foolproof way of taking your money away from the traffickers and heavy handed pimps but at least a step in the right direction!

www.WhichCallGirl.com

For Escorts and CallGirls in Barcelona go straight to the Barcelona page.

For Hookers and Prostitutes in Madrid go straight to the Madrid listings. 

For Masseuses and Models in Lerida, go straight to the Lleida directory.

Good luck!

Spain, Marriage and Puticlubs

Spain, traditionally a catholic country where divorce was virtually impossible and carried a huge social stigma. Now its catching up with the rest of Western Europe with its new laws bringing higher divorce rates.

However its still a long way away from disposible marriage system enjoyed in the USA where you can get married in Vegas dressed as Elvis and Marilyn and then get divorced before the photos have come back from the printers. This is perfectly summed up by the great Bart Simpson "marriage? im not ready for a 3 year commitment yet"

Coming from the UK which is not too far behind the US cultural acceptance of rotating door marriages i can make some interesting comparisons between the more traditional Spanish system and the the more liberal UK.

Spain - hard to get out of marriage, lots of brothels

UK - easy to get out of marriage, few brothels*

*ignoring the Eastern European explosion of the last 5 years

It seems that since escaping an unhappy marriage is harder in Spain so brothels became more acceptable than divorce. Is this the case? Email me and let me know!

Another thing i notice is that in this country of lower divorce and seperation rates is that the communities seem more secure with less crime where Spaniards are involved and less evidence of social problems which sociologists in the UK try to relate back to single parent society. However the news is full of wives getting beaten to death by their husbands.  Anyone wish to discuss this hot potato of divorce V social integrity?

My final controversial question for the day is that with Spain having a ridiculous number of brothels and the UK so few by comparison, has anyone ever compared the rape and sexual crime statistics? The reason i ask this is that in the UK i have lots of female friends who live in fear of getting raped especially in the cities. I agree that this is probably more down to a percieved threat than a real threat but when they come to Spain they feel totally safe. I know that statistics on the subject will only count reported cases but even the figures i found suggest that after adjusting for population sizes the UK still has twice as many cases of rape compared to Spain. Is there a corolation between sexual assults and access to paid sex in a society?

These are just over-a-beer observations, I havent conducted a huge socialogical study of the subject but I would be interested to hear from anyone who has a view on this and i hope it can stimulate some useful debate.

Clubs, Whorehouses, Brothels, Massage Parlours, Brasshouses, Discrete Apartments and Knocking Shops in Spain

Yep, loads of words for them but basically theyre places where a guy goes to pay for a sexual experience.

In the UK massage parlours and saunas are the terms i hear most since brothels and whorehouses per se are illegal. With tougher new laws being suggested all of the time this terminology isnt likeley to change.

First thing to get straight is that in Spain a sauna is for gay men. The second thing is that any sign that says 'club' is most likely a brothel. Not a sports club, not a night club. Ok thats out the way now, we dont need any more funny stories about people discovering these two facts the hard way.

The most common term in Spain is puticlub, where the word puti comes from prostituta. Along with club de alterne and whiskeria your looking at the 3 most common terms for a bar or club type layout where you can go into a bar, order a drink and meet the girls.

Piso is the word for apartment, the 'pisos' in Spain are pretty much unregulated (as opposed to the clubs which sell alcohol) and therefore synonymous with the darker side of the trade although there are many well established 'pisos' with very proud standards which simply operate a cheaper alternative to the 'club' type establishments.

I hope this clears up a few vocabulary and cultural issues!

Is prostitution legal in Spain?

From my understanding of the current Spanish law, prostitution is not illegal and being a client is not illegal. Since prostitution is well and truely on the Spanish cultural map and the government is male dominated ive never heard of anything more than chat about banning it here either. 

The illegal part comes from the practices that surround it and how its controlled. 

Human trafficking: the sick trade of human trafficking for sexual slavery is about illegal as you can get in any country. Proving guilt and having the political will to find the criminals and follow through is a bit controversial here in Spain where huge amounts of girls from the Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America are brought in to satisfy the huge local market for raping trafficked women.

Extortion and exploitation: where theres the means to make money theres always someone who wants to control it. Prostitutes, especially foreigners, are often very vulnerable to exploitation due to weak personal or social circumstances, drug dependancy, financial problems, sticky legal situations or simply being a woman in a dangerous enviroment. These weaknesses leave them wide open to exploitation from pimps, 'boyfriends', dealers, corrupt police and criminals. 

Corruption: as with any business on the edge of the law, protection and mitigation of risk is needed and it usually comes from non too legal sources. To avoid trouble from the authoritiesbribes are sometimes paid to stay off the authorities radar.

Working with no papers: you dont need to have been a victim of traffickers to be working in Spain as a prostitute with no visa or papers. Work permits are needed for all non EU citizens to get legal employment in Spain. There are many women who work as prostitutes simply because they wish to live in Spain but cant earn a decent living without working visas and papers. Given that prostitution is traditionally a cash in hand business its a viable option for those have crossed the moral bridge of selling their bodies to maintain a certain lifestyle.

Paying no tax or social security: when money is earned the state wants its piece of the action. In return it offers security and if you dont kick back you get threatened with prosecution and disruption to your activities ......mmmm sounds a bit like extorsion to me. Never the less cases have come up whereby clubs and bars which operate as brothels, even when the girls are earning for themselves and not the club, have been forced to employ the girls as it was viewed that theyre at a place of work.

Apartments as unlicensed brothels: theres loads of them! For various reasons they can fall foul of the law. From rental contracts which say they cant be used for prostitution, the local council not allowing certain economic activities in certain urban zones and properties through to local laws saying prostitution must take place in registered places. In Spain there are huge amounts of these places, mainly well known and tolerated but sometimes a nuisence which authorities try to purge. 

Street hustling: local councils seem to have their own tolerance and rules regarding 'street walkers', like in Lleida , Castelldefells and Barcelona where fines are handed out to clients and workers alike. However legal it may be in a given area the neighbours are often upset by it.

We all have our own opinions about whether prostitution should be legal or not and how controlled it should be but for the time being its like cigarettes and alcohol...... its legal to drink and smoke whilst you pay a higher price for doing it legally - so the bootleggers come in outside of the law with their cheap imports and completely exploit the situation!