Cheaper than having the clothes made in China or Thailand, the garments were irresistible to the chain stores who claimed they knew nothing about how they were being made. Known as Operation Wei, the raid exposed how many of the clothes put together by these illegal and exploited workers were destined for high street stores such as Zara, El Corte Inglés, Desigual and Cortefiel. In 2009, the Catalan police raided 40 illegal garment factories in the Mataró area, arresting 77 people and freeing 450 Chinese immigrants, most of whom were women working in conditions of semi-slavery that included violence. It’s a familiar ‘career’ path for many female Chinese immigrants.

She used the money to repay the cost of her trip from China and saved the rest. In return, she earned between €800 and €1,000 a month. She ate nothing but rice and noodles and slept alongside 30 others in a makeshift dorm. Mimi worked 16 hours a day, seven days a week.

“The workshop offers many of them access to the job market here,” says a police spokesperson. In fact, this is where many of the 47,973 Chinese immigrants registered in Catalonia begin their new lives in Spain. What she wasn’t expecting was to find herself practically imprisoned for two years in premises in the Fondo neighborhood of Santa Coloma de Gramenet, where there is a large Chinese community. The inside of a sweatshop in Mataró that was shut down in 2009.

Besides, she would earn more money than she had at home. She knew she would be running up garments in a sweatshop, but she wasn’t worried about the hard work – after all, she was used to it. Like the other four women interviewed for this report, Mimi arrived in Barcelona three years ago thanks to a “snakehead,” an individual who specializes in smuggling in immigrants from China. And it has been a long, arduous road to get this far. Mimi’s not happy but she has a contract and set hours. Mimi’s parlor is close to the busy Sants neighborhood and doubles as a hair and nail salon whose services are advertised in the window. Now numbering over 100, they are fast becoming an additional tourist attraction for the city. Mimi works in one of Barcelona’s many Chinese ‘massage’ parlors where, according to the Catalan police, massage is synonymous with sex. Estefania took a month to cross Asia and Europe by car for a job in a sweatshop in Badalona

Massage parlor quad cities airport