Linda came to Spain 23 years ago after getting “a tip” that it was a good place to make money as a sex worker.
Pregnant by a partner who abandoned her back in her native Mexico, she was taken on by a sex club in Murcia on the Mediterranean coast.
“They gave me work and a place to live for me and my daughter when she was born,” she told Euronews. “It’s an option for a lot of female immigrants because they don’t ask for residency papers – or didn’t then.”
Linda went on to work in various clubs on what is known as the Mediterranean Corridor, a term coined by sociologist Antonio Arino to claim that prostitution was prevalent in most postcodes that touch the sea, whether that's in the shape of apartments, erotic night clubs and neon-lit highway hotels.
There are as many as 1,200 brothels lining Spain’s highways, such as the Olimpo, 40 kilometres outside the capital on the A6, which, despite being used to lock up 40 trafficked Romanian women back in 1999, is still doing a roaring trade.