Thursday, 09 September 2010 06:28

By Martin Delfin, Memo from Madrid

The other night, I had a long and interesting conversation with a couple of my friends about male prostitution. No joke. The chat occurred on the day that interior ministry officials announced that they broke up a ring that brought in as many as 80 young men, mostly from Maranhao state in northeast Brazil, to work in the sex industry. Some of the guys, the majority in their early 20s, said that they were led to believe that they were going to work as models or go-go dancers here in Spain . Their “bosses” gave them Viagra and other stimulants so they could remain sexually active for 24 hours, they told police.

The news of this sex trafficking ring, which yielded 14 arrests in Barcelona, León and Málaga, made headlines around the world. It was an unusual story for two reasons – the most obvious, because they were men and secondly because the guys’ own testimonies that they were misled before they were brought to Spain were unbelievable.

One of my friends wondered if men can easily be forced to prostitute themselves as easily as women. I told him I didn’t think so because prostitution thrives in Brazil.  Brazilians are non-discriminatory when it comes to the sex industry. I am most certain most of these guys knew exactly what they were going to be doing before they were brought to Spain, and were enticed by the money they could rake in.

While no official figures exist on how many men work as “chaperos” (as they are known in Spanish), some experts believe there are as many as 4,000 in Spain. Fundación Triángulo, the Madrid-based gay and lesbian collective, conducted a study two years ago on male sex workers and almost all of them answered that they were in it of their own free will. Most described themselves as being heterosexual and said they did it for the extra money.

Because prostitution is in a legal limbo here in Spain – it is neither prohibited nor protected – the number of websites where men offer there sexual services has proliferated. By just perusing four sites, I counted more than eight dozen men advertising their services.

My El País colleague Emilio De Benito published accounts of three male hustlers who said they work independently and on their own terms because they want to make money. On Tuesday, police continued the investigation, raiding several brothels in Madrid and arresting five more suspected ringleaders who were charged with promoting prostitution and violating labour laws.

Men as sex slaves? Maybe in some third world countries such as Pakistan and India where it is has been proven males are sold to work in the sex industry - but certainly not in Spain which has become a Mecca for gay tourists and where prostitution is abundant.

Apologies unnecessary

Jesús Neira has said he doesn’t need to apologise to anyone after he was convicted and ordered to pay a €1,800 fine with a 10-month licence suspension for drink-driving. No, he doesn’t have to apologise to the other drivers whose lives he put at risk for having a blood-alcohol ratio three times the legal limit. No, he doesn’t have to say he’s sorry for letting down the women he supposedly defended as head of the Madrid government’s now-dismantled gender violence observatory.

Nor does he have to express remorse for all the nasty statements he has made about everybody from the prime minister to the woman he gallantly rescued, Violeta Santander, two summers back from the hands of her alleged beating boyfriend Antonio Puerta.  Jesús Neira explains he wasn’t inebriated but instead had drunk one glass of wine and one liqueur at dinner, which didn’t mix well with the medication he was taking. He sticks by this story despite the testimonies of countless physicians interviewed on television that medicine doesn’t raise the blood-alcohol ratio, only alcohol does.

He refused to step down from his plum post given to him after he woke up from a 250-day-plus coma by Madrid regional premier Esperanza Aguirre. There are suggestions that the coma was induced by malpractice at a Madrid hospital where he was taken after Puerta delivered a powerful punch when he tried to get involved in the lovers' spat. But he maintains it was Puerta that knocked him out. Now Aguirre has decided to abolish the anti-gender violence unit after Neira refused to hand in his resignation.

One of Aguirre’s spokesman said that it had nothing to do with the Neira case but was part of a government restructuring announced in April. “I didn’t steal anything, I didn’t lie nor did I break the law,” Neira told Antena 3 television shortly before his conviction. That's what he says, but he did break the trust that many for still unexplained and uncanny reasons placed in him.

Thursday, 09 September 2010 06:28

Muriel Pilkington The Local Voice

In his review of “The Myths of the Civil War” by controversial historian Pio Moa,  (right), who wrote the definitive book on fascism, says that what matters is not that Moa was correct on every issue – no historian can be, Payne says – but that his “critical, innovative” work brings a breath of fresh air to a vital area of contemporary Spanish history that has long been stultified by stereotypes and a “long dominant political correctness”.