Marbella, the Godfather, a face lift and Mr Clean BY NICK SNELLING For property owners in Marbella the corruption and malfeasance of Marbella Town hall has been a nightmare of truly appalling proportions with an emotional cost difficult to calculate.  Some 600-700 properties risk being demolished whilst around 18,000 others are blighted by illegality.  Amazingly, one of the potentially richest towns in Spain is virtually bankrupt and has an infrastructure on the point of collapse.  The scandal of Marbella is a story that verges on the incredible. To some extent, it all began with the property crash of 1989.  Marbella was already notorious as a place where the jet-set rubbed shoulders with criminals and shady businessman.  For twenty years its glorious climate had attracted the wealthy, beautiful and dubious from around the world, creating an air of glamour that was a draw to tens of thousands of retiring and holidaying…

Full Details

Clubbing Together, Brothels in Spain and Spanish Culture BY NICK SNELLING In 2003, Spain’s Institute of National Statistics (INE) showed that just over one in four Spanish men under the age of 49 had experienced sex with a prostitute – with one in fifteen having done so within the previous year.  This was backed up by Maribel Montano of the ruling PSOE party who claimed in 2007 that: ‘every day 1.5 million men pay for sex’ in Spain.  In fact, there are an estimated 300,000 prostitutes working in Spain possibly turning over around 40 billion Euros per year, which roughly equates to the country’s education budget.  For good reason, Spain is sometimes dubbed the ‘Brothel of Europe’. Certainly, the openness and extent of prostitution can be a surprise to north Europeans who still cling to the myth of Spain as a prim and proper, old-fashioned, hard line, Catholic country.  This…

Full Details