"Twelve members of the gang, mainly Russian and Uruguayan nationals, who controlled four night clubs in northeastern Spain, have been detained on charges of assisting prostitution and illegal migration, forgery, and sexual harassment," a police official said.
He said the ring, led by a Uruguayan national, sent hundreds of young women from Russia to Spain, and that gang members raped them and forced them to use cocaine.
The operation was carried out by the Spanish National Police and Barcelona city police.
This is not the first time this year that police in Spain have clamped down on international criminal gangs trafficking women from Russia and subsequently forcing them into prostitution.
In July, Spanish police busted a gang that lured Russian women with job offers and then forced them into prostitution in the province of Almeria, southern Spain. Police then arrested a total of nine people, six of them Russian nationals and three Spanish.
In April, 40 Russian women were freed from sex slavery in a special police operation in Costa Brava, a coastal region near Barcelona. Most of the women were from St. Petersburg and had been held captive under threat of physical violence.
Seven people, including the gang leader - an Albanian national - were arrested and face charges of human-trafficking and organizing a prostitution ring. The gang also included three Russians, one Kosovo Albanian, and one Armenian.
Criminal groups involved in the illegal sex trafficking normally recruit women with offers of legal work abroad, and promise to sort out their visas. The women are then forced into prostitution to pay off their debts, and their documents are stolen.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights reported last year that more than 500,000 women from Russia have been sold into the sex industry since the collapse of the Soviet Union in early 1990s.
