CULTURE SPAIN – SEX IN SPAIN

SEX IN SPAIN

It  is funny how it can take a long time to understand what is happening around you when you are in a foreign country.  Once you do then, of course, you tend to think ‘Oh my Goodness – I can’t believe that I have been so stupid!’

I am afraid that this was my reaction to a little known part of Spanish culture – which escaped me completely for several years.

I am talking of Spain’s seemingly infinite number of ‘Clubs’.  These can be seen on the fringes of almost any town or city in Spain and are noticeable for their very large, red, neon-lit signs prenouncing ‘Club’ in no uncertain terms.  These I had passed for years without giving them a moment’s thought.  Mainly, this was because my years of going to night clubs are, sadly, long past.

However, not giving Spanish ‘Clubs’ a second’s thought was not to be the case for long!

A few years back, I was commissioned to do a couple of investigative articles on the sex industry in Spain for a reasonably serious family magazine.  The commission sounded interesting – but stumped me for a while.

After all (so I thought at the time) Spain is a bulwark of Catholicism and naturally deeply conservative, with expressing publicly anything to do with sex in Spain being unthinkable.  So, the chances of me being able to write anything even vaguely interesting about the sex industry in Spain seemed to be a bit far fetched.  Indeed, my commission suddenly seemed to be a ‘poisoned chalice’ from my editor – who had clearly come to the end of his tether with my split infinitives and diabolical spelling…

In fact, I could not have been more wrong as, asking around amongst my Spanish friends, I found that, as well as being deeply irreligious, the Spanish have a toleration to prostitution in Spain that would make most North European countries go apoplectic.  Not least, to my amazement, I found that virtually every building marked ‘Club’ is, in fact, a brothel!

The more investigation I did – the bigger the sex industry in Spain appeared.  Indeed, brothels in Spain hold a peculiar position within Spanish life – being (would you believe it!) neither illegal nor (astonishingly!) legal.  Meanwhile, the sex industry in Spain is massive and varies from the truly diabolical to a service, at its best, that can actually work tolerably well for all parties.

I mention all of this because the articles (Brothel Culture and Confessions of a Call Girl) make interesting reading and show up the complexities of Spanish culture well.  The latter is neither simple nor straightforward – with Spain rarely failing to take me by surprise.

Indeed, my commissions on prostitution in Spain jolted me out of my complacency about Spain and (helpfully) made me look again at the culture of Spain in a new and more challenging way.  This, as we all know, is never a bad thing, as it is all too easy to ‘sleepwalk’ your way through a country – leaving it with the same ignorance as when you entered it!

RELEVANT INFO: Brothel Nation and Confessions of a Call Girl