By EFE,
Barcelona (Spain) : One hundred police officers took part Saturday in an anti-prostitution operation in downtown Barcelona that ended with 16 arrests in the Catalan capital.
Those taken into custody were two Nigerian prostitutes, two Brazilian transvestites and another 12 foreign citizens who are in Spain illegally, police officials told EFE.
Taking part in the operation were agents of Spain’s National Police, the regional Catalan police and the Barcelona municipal force.
This police operation is the first in which the three police forces have worked together and comes after a fierce controversy sparked by the publication at the beginning of this week of prostitutes photographed having sex in the middle of downtown Barcelona.
The interior ministry of the regional government of Catalonia promised to maintain until the end of autumn the police reinforcements that in recent days have succeeded in driving prostitutes out of Las Ramblas, one of the best-known areas of the Catalan capital that daily attracts thousands of tourists and visitors.
Besides these recent brazen cases of street sex that offend public decency, prostitutes in Spain, some 90 percent of whom are said to be illegal immigrants, are generally left to ply their trade. Brothels are outlawed but many “clubs” operate as such with little interference, according to the travel website gospainabout.com.
The site also says that many prostitutes double as pickpockets, especially in busy areas like the Gran Via in Madrid and Las Ramblas in Barcelona.