The Costa del Sol is famous for its tourists and beaches but just behind them is a hidden world of industrial greenhouses where African migrants work in extreme conditions
Charities working with illegal workers during this year's harvest claim the abuses meet the UN's official definition of modern-day slavery, with some workers having their pay withheld for complaining. Conditions appear to have deteriorated further as the collapse of the Spanish property boom has driven thousands of migrants from construction to horticulture to look for work.
The Guardian's findings include:
• Migrant workers from Africa living in shacks made of old boxes and plastic sheeting, without sanitation or access to drinking water.
• Wages that are routinely less than half the legal minimum wage.
• Workers without papers being told they will be reported to the police if they complain.
• Allegations of segregation enforced by police harassment when African workers stray outside the hothouse areas into tourist areas.
You can read more about Spain's trafficking law on the US TIP Report.
MADRID — The Spanish police said Tuesday that it had dismantled for the first time a human trafficking network bringing men rather than women into the country to work as prostitutes.
The police said 14 people, almost all of them Brazilian, were arrested over recent weeks as part of an inquiry into the network’s activities begun in February.
The sex workers were recruited in Brazil, with their travel costs to Spain initially covered by the trafficking network’ organizers in return for a pledge to work subsequently for them, according to a police statement. Most of the recruits, however, expected to work as models or nightclub dancers, although some allegedly knew that they were coming to Spain to offer sex.
The police estimated that between 60 and 80 men were brought to Spain by the network, most of them in their 20s and originating from Brazil’s northern state of Maranhão. They reached Spain by passing through third countries.
The network covered the whole of Spain, with the sex workers placed in, and then switched regularly between, apartments whose landlords received half of the money earned by them, as well as €200, or about $255, to cover food and lodging, officials said.
The police released a video of one of the apartments in which some of the arrests were made, with bunk beds and mattresses cramped into neon-lit rooms. The gang, meanwhile, advertised pictures of the men on Web sites as well as in classified newspaper ads. The sex workers were allegedly provided with Viagra, cocaine and other stimulants to help keep them available for sex 24 hours a day. Most of their customers are suspected to have been men.
The bulk of the arrests occurred on the island of Majorca, including that of the Brazilian accused of being the ringleader, whose identity was not disclosed by the police. The prostitutes ended up owing the network as much as €4,000 each and were sometimes threatened with death if they refused to pay the debt, according to the Spanish police.
There are 1.2 million child victims of human trafficking per year around the world, according to data given by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).
Children are used as an economic profit source by organized crime. Trafficking of minors is a prosperous business, which moves 40 billion dollars a year. For under age children alone, the profit reaches 23.5 million euros a year.
"Children are easier to recruit, convince and move and therefore, due to the low costs, they generate an enormous economic profit."
"A child begging in Vienna or Madrid can earn a hundred euros a day, while girls who are forced to prostitute themselves generate profits of 1,000 to 3,000 euros a week. If we take into account that a procurer pays around 3,000 euros a day for each girl, he will have paid off the purchase in a week and he will obtain profits from then on."
In declarations to journalists before taking part in a child trafficking congress organized by Save the Children, Liliana Orjuela, who is in charge of the organization has explained that child exploitation does not only happen in the Global South but also in Europe, especially in poor countries like Romania or former Soviet republics, where there are many at risk minors.
According to local police, in Spain there are around 20,000 minors who have been forced into prostitution, begging or who have been victims of international crime nets which have used them for labor exploitation, illegal adoptions or even organ trafficking. According to Save the Children and Spanish Net against human trafficking data, 50,000 women and girls are victims of human trafficking in Spain. They come from Morocco, Sub-Saharan Africa, eastern countries, Brazil and Central America, and are brought to Spain where "there is great demand."
