A women's nutter group has welcomed a decision by Spain's parliament to reject a move that would have made prostitution legal.

Parliament on Tuesday voted 329-5 against a proposal to recognize prostitution as a profession.

The Federation of Progressive Women welcomed the vote, describing prostitution as a form of violence and slavery which was being supported and promoted by many people.

The Catalan republican party ERC, which tabled the proposal, said it would prefer prostitution not to exist, but that it was better to grant prostitutes legal rights than to leave them at the mercy of pimps.

Parliament also rejected calls for a ban on newspaper ads on prostitution, saying it was preferable for the media voluntarily to stop advertising the sex trade.

A large majority of people in Spain back a proposal that would make prostitution a regular occupation, according to a poll by Instituto Noxa published in La Vanguardia. 76% of respondents support regularizing prostitution, while 17% oppose it.

While prostitution in Spain is not illegal, owning or running a brothel has been illegal since 1956.

The Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC)—a Catalan nationalist party—is proposing that prostitution be regularized across Spain, in order to offer protection to voluntary sex workers and combat illicit human trafficking organizations. The ERC has also put forward a bill that would ban all ads selling prostitution in print publications. ERC lawmaker Joan Tardà has called the ads disgusting and said that they denigrate women.

Last month, Tardà declared: Regulating is the only way to guarantee social and labour rights to the people that practice it [prostitution], bring them back from the fringes....It will also make it easier to track crime associated with it.

With a new by-law which comes into force next month, Granada becomes the first town in Andalucía to introduce fines for street prostitution.

Ondara on the Costa Blanca has now followed their example and will be voting at a council meeting next week on its own by-law with fines for anyone who offers, solicits, negotiates or accepts, directly or indirectly, sexual services on the public way.

The fines range from 80 up to 500 €, but sexual relations taking place in the street will be considered a very serious offence and could be fined by as much as 2,000 €.

The local Town Hall told El Mundo newspaper that the measure will only be applied to those who re-offend knowing that the ban is in place, adding that the municipal social services department is on hand to help and advise any prostitutes who work locally who want to give up their profession.

Update: In Force in Granada

11th November 2009. See article from etaiwannews.com

The southern Spanish city of Granada has started imposing fines on street prostitutes and their clients in a rare crackdown on a profession that lies in legal limbo.

City councilor Eduardo Moral says the new municipal order that went into effect Tuesday imposes fines of up to $4,500 for soliciting or offering sex within 200 meters (660 feet) of a school, residential area, shopping center or business complex.

Outside that limit, the fine can be as much as $1,100.

The government of Marbella gave green light to a new regulation, which among other things, would prohibit the offering and demand of sexual services in the the street, i.e. prostitution.

The new regulation claims to be in response to neighbourhood requests.

The Valencian Federation of Municipalities and Provinces has introduced a law making sex on the street punishable by a fine of 3,000 euros. The new framework also outlaws prostitution, begging and any other activity that disturbs the tranquillity of neighbours. Also included for the first time is legislation that aims to control the behaviour of club doormen.

The law, which will apply everywhere within the City of Valencia, provides for penalties of up to 3,000 euros for having sex in a car within the city or 400 euros for people who buy pirated DVDs and CDs in the street.

The legislation has been unanimously approved by the council representatives.

The law seeks to end prostitution in the street and is aimed equally at prostitutes and their clients. For a first offence clients and prostitutes face penalties of between 1,500 and 3,000 euros. If sex workers continue to offend they will suffer imprisonment. The document warns that any person who has sexual intercourse in a vehicle in the street will also be fined up to 3,000 euros.

The Spanish government has put itself on collision course with the national press with the announcement that it wants to ban adverts offering sexual services from their classified sections.

The adverts, which fill at least a page in most of Spain's dailies, are worth €40m (£34m) a year to the newspaper industry.

President José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero made the announcement during this week's state of the nation speech, claiming it was part of a strategy to fight the people trafficking and sexual exploitation: As long as these advertisements exist, they contribute to the idea of this activity as normal.

If the ads are banned, newspapers will want to be compensated and, worryingly for Zapatero, El País, a staunch supporter of his socialist party, is the paper that earns the most from this form of advertising. With its left-liberal sensibilities and readership profile, El País is the Spanish paper that most resembles the Guardian, and yet it earns €5m a year from advertising prostitution.

Yolanda Besteiro of the 'Progressive' Women's Federation was scathing about what she regards as the newspaper's hypocrisy: No media outlet can proclaim itself a defender of human rights when it publishes this kind of advertising, which makes them directly complicit in this type of slavery.

The most openly religious daily, ABC, also runs the ads. El Publíco is the only national that does not run them as a matter of policy. Spain is the only European country where the quality press carries adverts for sex. Prostitution is big business in Spain, worth an estimated €18bn a year.