She had expected a job in a hotel. But when Valentina arrived here two months ago from Romania, the man who helped her get here β a man she had considered her boyfriend β made it clear that the job was on the side of the road. He threatened to beat her and to kill her children if she did not comply. La Jonquera used to be a quiet border town where truckers rested and the French came looking for a deal on hand-painted pottery and leather goods. But these days, prostitution is big business here, as it is elsewhere in Spain, where it is essentially legal.
In the past, most customers were middle-aged men. There is little reliable data on the subject. The report said that 90 percent were trafficked. But police officials and advocates say that whatever the number of victims, it is growing. Thousands of women are forced to work β often for even lower pay now, because of the economic downturn β everywhere from fancy clubs and private apartments to industrial complexes and lonely country roads.
Europe woke up to the problem of trafficked women in the s, as young women from the former Soviet Union began to arrive in large numbers, and it has spent much of the last decade developing legal frameworks to address the issue.
Lax laws Fueling the boom in the sex industry in Spain are many factors, experts say, including porous borders in many parts of the world and lax laws. Until , Spain did not even have a law that distinguished trafficking from illegal immigration. And advocates say arrests of traffickers and services for trafficked women remain few. More important, some advocates say, is the growing demand for sex services from younger tourists.
Of course, there is a local market. One study cited by a United Nations report said that 39 percent of Spanish men admitted having visited a prostitute at least once.
