The head of Justice, Interior and Public Administration, Gabriela Bravo, announced this Monday the request to the Ministry of Territorial Policy, Public Works and Mobility to carry out the modification of several articles of the Road Law of the Valencian Community, dated of 1991, so that pimps and prostitution clients who intend to acquire paid sex on regionally owned roads can be sanctioned with fines of up to 15,000 euros.
Bravo has made this announcement during her speech at the Feminist Forum “Prostitution Ordinance Proposals”, organized by the Citizen Protection area of the Valencia City Council, in which she has assured that this initiative joins the others that her department has launched “in order to establish a society free of prostitution.”
The Minister explained that the proposal sent to the Ministry of Territorial Policy requests the inclusion of a new article at the end of Title VIII of the regional regulations on roads where “the temporary occupation of public domain areas, of protection and reserve to carry out uses and activities related to the provision of services of a sexual nature.
Likewise, the initiative adds that “an action procedure to support and protect people who carry out uses and activities related to the provision of services of a sexual nature” must be established.
In this way, the reform that the Ministry of Justice intends to carry out also includes the addition to article 41 of the Highway Law, a new section that defines as a serious offense “requesting, negotiating or accepting, directly or indirectly, paid sexual services in the spaces subject to this law, according to the provisions of its article 2.
In no case will the behaviors detailed in said articles be grounds for sanctioning women in a situation of prostitution or victims of sexual exploitation. In this sense, it will be considered a serious infraction that can be sanctioned with fines of between 3,001 and 15,000 euros.
Likewise, the Minister explained that the Valencian model to eradicate prostitution, “on which we have been working for fifteen months”, is based “on the need to guarantee fundamental rights because without them we cannot speak of democracy”.
For this reason, Bravo has defended that, although we must “put the focus on the pimps”, we must also “look at them, who are not there by their will but because we continue to drag a concept of patriarchal society in which there are men who they feel they have the right to pay for a woman’s body.”
“From the Generalitat we are going to continue marking the path towards abolition with concrete measures such as the modification of the Show Law and the Abolitionist Ordinance model to put an end to this phenomenon that shames us”, concluded Gabriela Bravo.
In this regard, the Ministry of Equality of Mónica Oltra presented different allegations to the draft of the draft bill to amend Law 14/2020 on public shows, recreational activities and public establishments from Gabriela Bravo’s portfolio, understanding that it invades her powers in gender equality and prevention of violence against women.
In the same way, it defends that it also appropriates state powers and that sanctions on whoretailers indirectly exert added pressure on women who practice prostitution, an activity that the Department of Oltra believes will be transferred to other more opaque places if pursues its activity on the roads.
However, the vice president of the Generalitat pointed out that the request launched by Gabriela Bravo to draw up a new comprehensive law in Spain to abolish prostitution is “common sense”, because “leaving migrant women in a precarious situation” to the that this norm puts on them is “impossible”.
