Velocci suggested the statistic was a ploy by the Guàrdia Urbana to exaggerate the problem and evade responsibility. The Guàrdia Urbana declined to comment on the figure cited by 20 Minutos. Velocci also challenged the claim that street prostitution has changed. “The situation is in no way worse than five or six years ago. Twenty-five years ago the whole neighbourhood had an alternative economy. What we’re talking about here is a stereotype of social perception. Before, the women working there were Spanish and Catalan. Now, the majority are immigrant women and, what’s more, black. For the locals, this is horrible.”
Rafael Jiménez, with the National Police, said the change in the prostitutes’ nationality has, indeed, made a difference. Prior to the wave of immigration that began in the late Eighties, the streetwalkers were primarily women with Spanish citizenship, which gave the police some leverage for limiting them to the side streets. He suggested that citizens were more likely to pay fines and therefore to heed police warnings to remain on less conspicuous streets. Because prostitution itself is not illegal in Spain, the National Police’s only recourse is to deport the sub-Saharan women for lack of proper papers. “They could come from Nigeria or Ghana or anyplace else. And there’s no way that you can get these countries to accept them back without proof of their citizenship. So, the most we can do is keep them for 40 days and then turn them back out onto the street.”
There has been discussion on the city level about passing ordinances that would permit brothels and meublés in the Raval, to take the problem off the streets. An Ajuntament spokesperson told Metropolitan, “The Ajuntament is studying the situation and working on it.”
Barring an unusual decision nationally or locally to take swift, decisive action, it would appear that coexistence with the prostitutes, drug dealers and pickpockets is inevitable. The nature of that coexistence, however, will depend on what city officials, residents and local business owners are able to accept, and willing to do.
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Still the same
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Cocroaches at a Rambla restaurant
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