When in February of 2017 Colombian Evelin Rochel barricaded herself in the room 113 of the Flower’s Room, I had no way suspect that he was about to embark on a fierce legal battle with one of the largest brothels in Spain.
A fight that he won after four years and many comings and goings to court.
The final triumph was given to her by a recent and unprecedented Supreme Court ruling that made her the first sex worker in Spain to be recognized in an employment relationship with the brothel in which he worked, something that the owner continues to deny.
“It’s a bittersweet victory,” says Rochel, from 40 years, to BBC Mundo, “since it does not include any sanction for the employer.”
“He will not be sentenced to nothing even if you have pro because she has slaves within her facilities “, she points out.
This is what she alleged in the original civil lawsuit, which she filed when she was fired,” without settlement, without compensation, without having contributed and without right to unemployment ”, shortly before squatting in that room.
“At most they will tell him that he is a very bad boy.”
“Of course, the sentence opens the door for us to continue demanding labor rights for the sector,” he concedes.
Meanwhile, Antonio Herrero, the owner of Sala Flower’s, which he refers to as an erotic nightclub with an attached hotel, says that the ruling of the highest court in the country is “incorrect” , describes it as an “outrage” and assures that Rochel was never employed by him.
“She was a guest at the hotel and a client of the nightclub,” he remarked to BBC Mundo.
From Barranquilla to Spain
Born in Barranquilla, a city located on the west bank of the Magdalena River, just over 7 kilometers from its mouth in the Caribbean, Rochel arrived in the Basque Country at 26 years, two decades ago.
“I arrived like any other economic migrant, to look for what we could not find in our countries: the possibility of getting ahead through a employment, either in the toilet or as a taxi driver, and to undertake a family project ”.
After working for a couple of years as a house cleaner or waitress, due to a host of circumstances, she ended up dedicating herself to prostitution, an activity that in Spain it is not regulated by a specific law and it is not in itself illegal.
But while its exercise is not prohibited in the Penal Code, exploitation and pimping are; that is, to profit from “the exercise of the prostitution of others.”
Rochel started in Empuriabrava (Girona, Catalonia). “There I worked in a club where I had to give them the 40% of what I charged my bosses ”.
Then he passed through the mythical Riviera de Castelldefels – which was the largest brothel in Catalonia until it was closed in 2009 for a case of police corruption— and for another local in Barcelona, until in the 2002 ended up at the Flower’s Room, where he would work the following 15 years.
It is a complex located in the Madrid municipality of Las Rozas, made up of the club, where it says it attracted customers, and an attached aparthotel, in the one who had sexual relations with them.
It was there that things started to get complicated.
“Little rebellion”
It was November 2016 and Spain was barely recovering from years of an economic crisis that hit most sectors, including the alternate sector.
To cope with the situation, Entrepreneurs from the Flower’s Room “decided to toughen our working conditions,” Rochel recalls.
He says that they began to demand their presence in the premises during 12 hours without a break , from 5 p.m. to 5 p.m. in the morning.
“In addition, we ourselves had to clean the room after being with the client and they charged us with the responsibility of charging five euros more. s (US $ 6) for every half hour of use of the room. And if we forgot, we had to pay for it. ”
That was in addition to what Rochel and her companions paid for the use of the room in which they offered their sexual services -” for the right to to work”-: 90 euros (about US $ 108) per day.
And to other disbursements that they were already obliged to make: “If you wanted clean sheets, you had to pay, and the same with the towels, and to have light in the room you had to buy a kind of ticket ”.
But “in addition, they told us that if we wanted to rest, if one day we were sick or had our period lowered and we couldn’t work, we had to pay 120 euros (about US $ 168) , which for me was a fine. ”
“ AND Not to mention that we had to ask permission even to go to the bathroom, “she says.
Dissatisfied, the new situation led her to start” a small rebellion. ” He gathered around fifty colleagues and led a protest.
Faced with the threat of a strike , the boss agreed to meet with them and, after negotiating , decided that the new rules would not apply to old workers.
“But I had already become an uncomfortable person and I was in the spotlight,” says the Colombian. “And an argument with a client was the perfect excuse for me to get fired.”
It happened in mid-February of 2017.
“It was quite cruel and humiliating ”, He assures. She affirms that the owner called her to the office, where she had brought together a person from each department: a sex worker, a cleaning employee, a security officer, up to six.
“And there He himself told me that he had two hours, until 6 in the afternoon, to leave the building. He did it in front of all that public so that it would be exemplary, so that they would tell others what could happen to them if they acted like me. ”
The owner of the Hall Flower’s, Antonio Herrero, rejects the version . He tells BBC Mundo that the protest led by Rochel was due to the fact that the price of the hotel room was raised, from which they could come and go whenever they wanted – “the girls are totally free” – and that the Colombian fired “for bad behavior.”
Okupa de la 113
But how to vacate in two hours the room in which he had lived in the last 15 years?
“Since it was Friday, I got them to give me the weekend, which I took advantage of for file a complaint “, explains Rochel. “I did not know where it was going to take me, because I have no knowledge of law, but I knew that it would help me to gain a little time.”
With the protection and advice of the Hetaira Collective, an association who fights for prostitution to be considered an economic activity, filed a civil lawsuit against Grupo Empresarial La Florida SL – to which Sala Flower’s belongs – “for moral damages.”
And back in his room, he communicated that he did not intend to leave there.
In that space of little more than 15 square meters, with a shared bathroom with another colleague and a small balcony overlooking the highway, a week passed, until she had to leave escorted by the Civil Guard .
The D Espido, therefore, also had the character of eviction , something common for many prostitutes in Spain, according to the Hetaira Collective, since without a work contract they cannot rent and end up living in their room
Legal exercise
It is the lack of regulation in the sector that makes situations like this one be given, explains to BBC Mundo the labor lawyer Juan Jiménez-Piernas, who represents Rochel’s case.
L Clubs cannot hire prostitutes.
They assure that the workers of their premises are “hostess girls” ; that is, they keep men company to drink drinks during their stay.
But after years of paying fines after labor inspections discovered that there were women in the hostess premises working without having been registered in social security (the public health insurance system), in 2007 many of the entrepreneurs changed their strategy , explains Jiménez-Piernas.
They stopped paying commissions for the drinks that customers consumed at the bar and began to charge them the rent of the room in which they carried out their sexual services (renting a room is not considered pimping in Spain).
Thus, without commissions, there was no remuneration and no employment relationship or the corresponding obligations on the part of the employer.
And it is that, according to the Workers’ Statute, so that it has and a labor relationship, there must be three assumptions: that there is an activity, that it is carried out under certain guidelines (schedules, rules, etc.) and that there is a remuneration.
“They eliminated one of the characteristic elements of the employment relationship, but making sure that the girls were going to continue going down to do the alternate, because that is where they attract clients ”, clarifies the lawyer Jiménez-Piernas.
In this framework, Rochel’s case marks a milestone .
After several defeats in court that she appealed, in February 2019 the Superior Court of Justice of Madrid (TSJM) concluded that there was indeed a working relationship between Rochel and the Flower’s Room.
The court avoided linking her with the establishment due to the “sexual services” that she provided in the apartment hotel attached to the club – therefore already said, because prostitution is not regulated—, but it resolved that its parallel function of alternate in the lo Cal de copas was “essential” for the business.
“It is a revolutionary sentence because it says that, although remuneration is not given as a characteristic of the labor relationship, it cannot be considered that it is a job, because it has all the other characteristics, and that the opposite would be to protect labor slavery ”, Jiménez-Piernas explains.
“ Consider that it was a job without the right to compensation would be as much as admitting slavery “, says exactly the resolution of the TSJM, to which BBC Mundo had access.
The ruling was appealed by the Group Empresarial la Florida SL, but on March 9, the Supreme Court, the highest judicial instance in the country, rejected the appeals filed against the ruling of the TSJM and agreed with Rochel.
” The circumstances lead to the conclusion that it was integrated into the organization of the company ”, sums up the Supreme Court in a ruling consulted by BBC Mundo.
The owner of the Flower’s Room continues to deny it and emphasizes that in his local “there is no alternate.” “We sell glasses. They are clients of the nightclub. ”
Meanwhile, Rochel’s lawyer considers that the sentence, although unpublished, is not“ round ”, since it does not address the compensation they requested for moral damages derived from the violation of dignity – “because slavery violates dignity” -, and that with it it has not been wanted to get to the bottom of the matter.
Therefore, it ensures that the fight in the courts continues .
” Since the employment relationship is proven, we are going to ask that Flower’s pay the social security for all these years “. They filed a complaint with the Labor Inspectorate, asking that “the contribution be calculated in accordance with what it would have been charging for the collective agreement of the Hospitality sector of the Community of Madrid”, he advances.
“And we are going to try to frame all the alternate of Spain in the collective agreement, with all its associated rights in terms of working hours, salary, prevention of occupational risks, measures against harassment …”, he continues.
Rochel, whose situation continues to be precarious – “after having denounced this whole story, it is now much more complicated for them to give me room to work in the premises, for fear that I will file a lawsuit again” – is shown willing to continue “fighting” .
And to do it from within.
“I am bast before bigheaded and my idea is to continue in sex work, because there needs to be someone who has a voice and is not afraid of stigma for showing the face , and that can demand labor rights for the sector “.
This is a fight against the system, not against their work centers, he clarifies, “because what the employers have done is what the system has allowed them through laws and judicial decisions.”
“Millions of euros have been taken by me work 15 years and that of my companions, money that The State remains in part and the business community in part, without there being any return for us through labor, risk or social protection from nowhere ”.
And the consequences of that have become evident more than ever in this health crisis: “The entire sector was literally on the bloody street. It was truly cruel. ”
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