This underground business came from afar, especially from the 60s and 70s when the owner of 127 Paseo de las Delicias began renting out all the apartments for his prostitution business. favorable outcome … After his death, his children, two men and one woman, became elderly. With five floors and a total of 18 homes, the three brothers who own the center know what’s going on inside. But the truth is, they don’t care at all.
The most important thing for them, as they made clear to the National Police personnel who received the statement, is to receive their monthly salary religiously. Knowing that criminal law does not punish their promiscuity (the “Only Yes” law excludes third-party sites, a term referring to the interests of those who provide a place for others to prostitute), they argued that this would also avoid the problem of illegal occupation.
A surreal explanation that really shows how calculated everything is. By becoming owners of the buildings and allocating all their homes to the same activities, they also avoided at least close-door neighborhood conflicts. “These are causing discomfort in the neighborhood, but unlike other apartment blocks, there are no residents in the same block who can report the situation,” explains Victor de las Heras, head of the Human Trafficking Investigation Unit at Madrid’s Superior Headquarters Migrant Brigade, who was responsible for the operation that ended with the arrest of 16 people and the identification of 140.
It was this chief inspector who asked his own inspector to begin an investigation of the property in question. “To see who’s getting paid, who’s paying for the apartment…” he added. The purpose is to find out whether the tenant actually lives in the apartment or whether it has been transferred to the management. And it didn’t take long for them to come to the same conclusion. Since the tenants themselves had abandoned the use, “Mama” (“a woman who was initially a victim of human trafficking and later assumed the role of manager”) was to pay the rent directly.
At this point, the accommodation owner can report the irregular contract situation, but remember that their only purpose is to receive remuneration on a monthly basis. And the “moms” pay what they say. For this reason, members of the Human Trafficking Unit continued to monitor until one day they decided to take action. “We accessed the common areas and asked if we could enter each floor,” de las Heras continues. For the operation, we enlisted the help of the Police Intervention Unit, the Air Media Unit, dog guides and officials from the Madrid Labor and Social Security Inspectorate.
open 24 hours
At that time, it was confirmed that in addition to remote video cameras being installed at the entrances to common areas, some women had timers installed on their room doors to control service times. The two elements set up to keep the business running are open 24 hours a day within a freely accessible block and the doors are always open. Outside, the Labor Inspectorate opened six cases on adjacent premises on Paseo de las Delicias itself, where the prices and conditions of meetings between customers and women were kept secret.
Of the 16 people arrested, 10 were the “Mami” (Latin) who ran these apartments and six other customers, all of whom were in Spain under unusual circumstances. After the liberation, Makro brothels have returned to normal operations, and so far there have been no changes to the operating structure. Meanwhile, given the obvious suspicion that a criminal organization is behind this network, National Police investigators have sent the information they have to the Public Prosecutor’s Office to request judicialization of the case.
As for the women, investigators remember that the prostitution mafia provides them with drugs to sell during their services, and that “if they take them, they and the customers pay them a little more,” delas Heras stressed, hinting that this is a clear indicator of pressure on women to comply.
It is worth remembering that the proliferation of brothels in large cities makes investigative work difficult as victims and pimps cannot always be identified, unlike the stronger enforcement that can be carried out on the streets or in cabaret clubs. The obstacles have not stopped the National Armed Forces’ experts from working, who have investigated a total of more than 226 human trafficking files in Madrid so far this year.
About The Author
