1. Outliers. People whose family culture has not changed since the 1800's and still practice it. These are no doubt uncommon statistical outliers, but they surely do exist.
2. People who do think it is wrong, but have low self-control and/or substance abuse problems, which makes them do things they are later ashamed of.
3. Immigrants. Immigrants from other places with other cultures can hardly be expected to adopt Swedish culture on this issue overnight – these things most likely take generations to be fully ingrained.
So yes, it is a “taboo” – it isn’t accepted at all.
School nurses and daycare personnel are trained to keep a lookout for any signs or stories from children, so anyone who does it will have to do it with the premeditated aim of doing it without anyone finding out, or else someone will find out. As I said, it is an ingrained social norm, not simply a thing which one does not talk about.
Did the law prevent the children to be spanked, or just made it a taboo topic and pushed all corporal punishment in the realm of the private home? I wonder if there have been any studies made about the actual amount of corporal punishment today (an article [1] from 2009 says that 10% of children are spanked).
[1]: http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2009/1005/p06s10-woeu....