(AP)
Updated: 2007-08-22 21:00

Police were investigating a 33-year old woman who allegedly tried to prostitute her two-year-old daughter in a brothel in northwestern Spain, authorities said Wednesday.

The woman, whose name was not released, was arrested Monday in Sitges, just outside Barcelona, after a brothel manager told police she offered him her child for sex in exchange for cash, a spokesman for the Civil Guard police said.

The woman was carrying an unspecified amount of cocaine at the time of the arrest, said the spokesman who spoke on condition of anonymity because of department rules.

The Barcelona daily La Vanguardia said the woman had left her 7-year-old son at a bar on a bustling boulevard near the brothel as she tried to prostitute the toddler. The paper said police were investigating whether the woman had offered the child in other brothels.

La Vanguardia said the mother told police she needed money because the father of the children did not give her any.

A judge in the nearby town of Vilanova i la Geltru placed the two children in their father's custody Monday.