Human trafficking: a hidden crime close to home
Mihaela Bidea reports from Teulada-Moraira’s jornada against the sexual exploitation and trafficking of women and children: what police, public services and support organisations said, why it matters in the Marina Alta, and where to turn for help.
September 23rd marks the International Day Against Sexual Exploitation and Trafficking of Women and Children. Teulada-Moraira turned that global observance into local practice. On Friday, social workers, healthcare staff, legal professionals, and police officers filled the council’s assembly hall for a day confronting a crime that survives, above all, by staying invisible.
The United Nations has long estimated that some 2.5 million people are trafficked and enslaved each year, sold into forced labour and sexual exploitation across every continent. Save the Children puts the number of children and infants specifically at 1.2 million trafficked every year. Spain functions primarily as a destination country for the trafficking of women and girls, while also serving as a transit route toward other European Union states, a detail that turns a global statistic into a local responsibility.
Three sessions structured the day, each organised by professional discipline.
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Detection, Protection, and Specialised Resources: Police, judicial, and forensic perspectives from the ground. A profile had been offered of the “typical” trafficking victim (economic hardship, lower social strata, limited education, ages 13 to 30, family burden or dysfunction, prior abuse), a characterisation immediately challenged during the Q&A as too narrow, and one this article does not treat as settled fact. What mattered more was the panel’s consensus on prevention: strengthening police structures, creating specialised units, deepening cooperation with national and international bodies, intensifying work with NGOs, and reinforcing surveillance. One line from the discussion captured the underlying philosophy “To raise awareness is not merely to inform, it is to dismantle the normalisation that feeds demand. When consciousness awakens, the market for exploitation loses the ground it stands on.” The panel also advises that institutional procedures themselves can revictimise. The emotional toll of navigating unsympathetic systems, repeating one’s story to indifferent officials, being met with suspicion instead of care, is itself a documented reason victims choose not to report. The remedy discussed was: listening without judgment, applying standardised protocols, ongoing training, and coordinating between services.
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Public Resources and Municipal Good Practice: the institutional response. This session shifted the focus from crime to governance, from what happens to victims to what institutions are structurally obligated to do about it. Speakers outlined the competencies of the Generalitat Valenciana’s relevant bodies alongside the concrete role local administrations play in preventing trafficking and prostitution, and one position was stated without ambiguity: prostitution is treated here as a manifestation of gender-based violence. Prevention has to start in early education, embedded in how children learn to understand relationships, consent, and power long before they are old enough to encounter exploitation directly. The clearest example of this philosophy in practice came from Calp. In 2023, the town council approved a Municipal Ordinance to eradicate prostitution and trafficking for sexual exploitation, adopted as a direct consequence of joining the network of municipalities free of trafficking and prostitution. It is treated as an ongoing commitment that depends on continuous, cross-sector coordination between social services, healthcare, education, the Alba Programme, and social organisations, sustained only through communication and transparency.
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Comprehensive Support and Direct Intervention with Women. Alicante Trata 0 network, Alicante Alba Programme, and Amar Dragoste association. The final panel brought the discussion to those who work directly with survivors, and to what “comprehensive care” means when taken literally. Alicante Trata 0 is the province’s network of organisations against human trafficking. Active since 2015, it describes its vision as becoming a stable point of reference in knowledge of trafficking, in coordination and dialogue between organisations, and in public awareness. It has spent the years since making the reality of trafficking visible in different spheres of public life. The Alba Programme, delivered under the Valencian Community’s concerted-action model for social services, offers psychological, social, training-and-employment, and legal support to women who are victims of sexual exploitation in prostitution and trafficking, as well as to the minor children who accompany them. The Amar Dragoste association has protected and supported women in situations of trafficking or prostitution since 2010. Its representative reiterated that Spain is Europe’s leading destination and ranks third worldwide in demand for prostitution. What the three share is a refusal to treat support as a single service: psychological, social, occupational and legal care are offered together, sustained by a network that coordinates the organisations providing it.
Two ideas ran through all three panels. The first is that the exploitation of women and girls is sustained by demand, and demand by a culture that has learned not to see it: prevention therefore means reaching people early, in how children learn about relationships and power, and naming prostitution for what it is, a manifestation of gender-based violence. The second is that no single institution can answer a crime that crosses every institutional boundary. Police, healthcare, social services, education and specialised organisations each hold a fragment of the response, and what protects victims is the coordination between them.
For a women’s association, this topic sits at the centre: the victims are overwhelmingly women and girls, and the trade that exploits them survives on a demand kept alive by cultural indifference. To confront it is to stop the normalisation of women’s bodies as a commodity that every equality organisation works against every day.
Stop making it a distant problem. Press reporting on the province places victims exploited in houses converted into brothels in the Marina Alta, and it was precisely this comarca that the jornada set out to address. Detection begins with the people who notice: neighbours, co-workers, and the women’s groups other women trust. The panels made clear that victims are less likely to report, and that the emotional toll of doing so, and of what follows, is part of the reason. That is where an association like ours has something institutions alone cannot offer: a place to listen without judgment, and a way to say aloud what the community would rather not see.
Where to turn
Numbers checked on 14 October 2026.
Report a suspected case, anonymously and confidentially:
National Police: tel 900 10 50 90 (free) [email protected]
Support and advice for women, including victims of trafficking:
Generalitat Valenciana’s Centro Mujer network: 900 580 888 (24 hours). Professionals can also call for guidance.
Victims of sexual violence:
Generalitat’s 24-hour comprehensive care centres, 900 22 00 22.
Specialised support for victims of trafficking and sexual exploitation:
Amar Dragoste 615 430 452 (24 hours, nationwide).
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