The Catalan border town of La Jonquera, a busy crossing point for traffic between Spain and France, is also home to one of Europe’s biggest and best-known brothels, Paradise. At 2,700 square meters, it has 80 rooms and also provides accommodation for its sex workers.
Inaugurated in 2010, this establishment shut its doors on March 13, as many other businesses across Spain did after the government decreed a state of alarm and introduced strict confinement measures for the population in a bid to contain the spread of the coronavirus.
The approximately 90 women who work there, according to one sex worker’s estimate, suddenly found themselves out on the street. “We were literally standing in the street with our suitcases in our hands,” she said.
The brothel is located on the outskirts of La Jonquera, in an area filled with large restaurants, gas stations, supermarkets, casino hotels and sex shops. The town is home to many other brothels besides the Paradise due to its location in Catalan, which makes it a busy transit hub at all times of the year.
Layoffs
The club’s owner, José Moreno, has filed for a temporary layoff scheme known as ERTE, which the government has created specifically to address the economic fallout of the coronavirus crisis.
Moreno’s ERTE affects 69 employees at Paradise, none of whom are sex workers. Despite physically using the premises, the latter have no formal legal ties with the company, from which they rent out the rooms. In Spain, where prostitution is not regulated but pimping is illegal, licenses are granted to “clubs” that may work as brothels as long as the sex workers are not directly hired by the owner.
