The municipal ordinances: between the regulation and the sanction of prostitution in Spain

Abstract

This article aims to analyze the content of some Spanish municipal ordinances that regulate the practice of prostitution in public space, as well as the impact and consequences of its application on sex workers. The impact is analyzed from the perspective of the main victims, sex workers and other actors involved in the implementation of these ordinances, such as professionals from entities and associations linked to the issue, municipal techniques, municipal political representatives, police bodies and experts in the theme Both the "generic" municipal ordinances of "civility" and the specific ones of prostitution, with the sanctions to the exercise of sex work, seek to make invisible, clandestinize, persecute and criminalize sex workers with the excuse of "citizen security", "civility" and "citizen coexistence" erroneously understood as "public order" instead of guaranteeing the rights of women sex workers.