Spain: will Pedro Sanchez finally outlaw prostitution?

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has vowed again to criminalize prostitution on Sunday, stating the practice “enslaves” women.

“And out of this congress emerges a commitment I will implement. We will advance by abolishing prostitution, which enslaves women,” he said at the end of a three-day congress of his party in Valencia.

Without providing further details, Sanchez has set out his policy targets for the upcoming years and vowed to “abolish” prostitution in the country.

Spain became the third center for prostitution in the world after Thailand and Puerto Rico, according to a 2011 UN study,  ever since the practice was decriminalized in 1995.

The industry has boomed since its decriminalization and it is commonly estimated that around 300,000 women work as prostitutes in Spain.

Prostitution remains unregulated in Spain, and there is no punishment for those who offer paid sexual services of their own will, as long as it does not take place in public spaces. However, pimping or acting as a proxy between a sex worker and a potential client is illegal.

Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez previously pledged to abolish prostitution in his party’s election manifesto in 2019, describing it as “one of the cruelest aspects of the feminization of poverty and one of the worst forms of violence against women”.

However, no actions were taken and no bill was tabled.

Public opinions toward the practice differ. While some female voters were wooed by the announcement, organizations and Committees who support sex workers including the Organizacion de Trabajadoras Sexuales (OTRAS) who was given the green light in 2018 to create a safety net for sex workers, would be threatened.

According to a 2009 survey by the country’s state-owned Social Investigations Centre (CIS), one in three men in Spain have paid for sex at least once in their life. However, another report in the same year suggested the figure was almost 40%.