Conjugal prostitution: Spain's other hidden economy

Selling your vvife: the hidden economy of some marriages

The scene repeats itself in thousands of Spanish households: the vvife has a level of spending that doesn't match her salary, but nobody asks. Behind that money there may be an inheritance, an online business or, according to accounts gathered in entrepreneurial circles, an activity that never appears on the income tax return: prostitution. The question, which sounds like a joke, has a perverse economic logic that some analyse without embarrassment: marriage as a business.

Two distinct realities emerge. On the one hand, married women who work in prostitution without their husband knowing, and who thus finance the household's little luxuries: clothes, dinners, makeup, hairdressing. The husband enjoys a quality of life without wondering how it is paid for. On the other hand, there are cases where the husband not only knows, but becomes an intermediary, charging for access to his vvife. Rates are even described, though without verifiable data.

Some see in this second group a natural evolution of the man who has paid for digital content all his life: accustomed to opening his wallet for skins, subscriptions and OnlyFans, he ends up applying the same logic in reverse: charging for what he used to pay for. The comparison with Al Capone works as a metaphor: what ultimately gives the people involved away is not the offence itself, but the gap between income and lifestyle.

What is disconcerting is not that it exists, but that it is analysed with the same coldness as a property investment, the difference being that here the human capital is the spouse and the return is invisible to the tax authorities. Without official statistics, the only certainty is that the shadow economy also has its marital side.