You’re never far from prostitution in Spain – in the media, on the road, in the street or possibly even in your own block of flats. Last week we had yet another ‘serious’ TV exposé and this week the print media has majored on the subject because of a parliamentary Commission on the subject. As in other countries, prostitution is not in itself illegal here but most of the associated activities certainly are. Though, given the number of very visible brothels, you’d be forgiven for wondering about this. Having considered everything, the Commission went for the Do-Little option, a decision which found no favour with either the left-wing El Pais or the right-wing El Mundo. But, then, the editors are not politicians two months away from elections. For those interested, at the end of this blog there’s a translation of a relevant article from Sunday’s El Mundo.

Carlos has taken me to task for assuming, when my umbrella was lifted in my favourite café, it had been taken by some selfish bastard who didn’t care whether its owner got drenched. He proposed the equally-valid alternative that it had been taken by someone who viewed it as an “umbrella that had lain forgotten there for months and decided to take it temporarily in order not to catch a cold”. Well, I may not agree with everything Carlos says but he seems a very charitable chap to me. I wonder if he's available to marry one of my daughters.

Galicia Facts

At 15,824 euros a year, per capita income here has risen to 81% of the EU average, against 101% for Spain as a whole. Technically, this takes Galicia above the 75% ceiling beyond which the region would no long qualify for EU handouts. But, as it happens, for the period 2007-2013, the Commission happily used the 2000-2 number of only 73%.

Galicia remains – after Estremadura, Andalucia and Castilla-La Mancha - one of the poorest regions in Spain. And its rise up the EU charts reflects the arrival of new - even poorer – states from Eastern Europe, rather than any impressive upturn in the local economy. These new entrants will surely be pushing Spain/Galicia from the trough when negotiations really get under way for the 2013-2020 period.

British Society

I’ve touched recently on the outrage of ever-increasing local bureaucracy and taxation. Here’s a relevant article from today’s Daily Telegraph.


And here’s the article mentioned above:-

The Whore of Oros*?

Miguel Angel Mellado

Yes, this is what they call the Jack of Oros in a Spanish pack and I don’t really know why. Perhaps it’s because with Tarot cards the Jack of Oros indicates passion, daring, generosity of devotion, etc. And, if the next card is a 5 of Oros, it means you’re pathologically unfaithful. (All of this applies only to men). Tarot apart, what’s certain is that whores, prostitutes, [+ 6 other words] . . . call them what you will, more than enriching themselves with gold, they have made many others golden.

Let’s begin with language: if any bar prohibited the use of this short and sonorous word [puta], there’d be a sudden silence. Instead of “What a pleasure!” you can say “What a whore mother!”. Which is not the same as saying “Your mother is a whore”. Such subtleties with this swearword are impossible for those trying to learn Spanish. A foreigner could never understand why one friend can say to another, including his brother, “What a son of a whore you are !” by way of praising some domestic achievement.

So, it’s not only the business of pimps which should be grateful to this holy profession (‘holy’ because it began in the temples dedicated to the goddess of love in Babylonia). In reality, we are all pimps in the primary sense of the word (proxeneta), for it’s Latin for intermediary. Newspapers are intermediaries for information in general and for prostitution in particular, via their daily contact ads. Some of these, for sure, are incomprehensible. If you read ‘Duplex 50’, ‘Prostatic enemas’ ‘Little Spanish doll’ or ‘Housewives permanently pissed off’, you would never associate these with prostitution if they weren’t in the Contacts section of the paper.

This primary question for today arises because a joint Congress/Senate Commission is producing a report on prostitution in Spain and we’ve had the case of a free paper (20 Minutes) deciding to stop putting ads for prostitutes in its pages. The Business Gazette had done this earlier. Except for the now-disappeared YA, which was good enough to end up in heaven, all the major papers daily publish one to four pages of girls, boys, transsexuals, mixtures and other types who sell themselves. Adverts whose location sometimes makes you laugh and sometimes makes you cry: periodicals with a Religious section or supplement which first show you the road to salvation and then, on the next page, show you how to get lost.

Adverts yes, but adverts not in the serious press? The debate is open. If being a male or female prostitute was a decision as freely taken as becoming a journalist (for some we are children of the same mother), publishing these ads would be normal. It would be just another service. “News you can use”. But what should make us pause for thought is that between 85 and 90% of those who prostitute themselves are forced to do so. And being an intermediary (proxeneta) for the pimps (proxenetas) is not the best road to take in serving society in its need for rigorous information.

* One of the suits in a Spanish pack of cards – golden coins.