While covering a story about a Spanish proposal to outlaw all middlemen involved in prostitution, AJE senior correspondent Natasha Ghoneim and her team came up against a wall of silence, but managed to get a story nevertheless. We spent almost two weeks looking for prostitutes. When a car began following us, we knew our scouting mission was over for the night. Our photographer on this shoot was a bi-lingual English and Spanish speaking man. I figured it would be easier if he approached women alone initially, as opposed to the three of us at once.
An ambush interview is best reserved for politicians who are refusing to be held accountable. The multi-billion-dollar-a-year industry has been decriminalised in Spain since The approach of law enforcement has been to punish the pimps not the prostitutes. Brothels have legally opened by renting out rooms for prostitutes to service their clients.
However, the current prime minister takes the line that prostitution is violent and tantamount to the enslavement of women. There are also concerns that since most prostitutes in Spain are migrants, many women and girls are being trafficked.
The thousands of sex workers and the union that represents them are fighting what they see as a threat to their livelihoods. Needless to say, our dialogue with her ceased immediately since she was not going to dictate the terms of how we reported the story. Instead, our crew had to go back to the basics of reporting. We found women who were honest about their challenges.
Business had dropped precipitously during the pandemic. Some preferred working the streets as opposed to inside a brothel to make more money, despite the dangers. But woman after woman rejected our request to speak with us on camera even though we promised to conceal their identities.
