Surrogacy in Spain: A shady business favored by administrative permissiveness 3/3

There is a growing phenomenon in Spain in which more and more middle-income families are participating: faced with the impossibility of reproducing, they hire women to gestate babies for a sum of money. Sometimes families struggling to conceive even ask for a loan to do something that, paradoxically, isn't legal in Spain, but which, once carried out in one of the countries where it is legal, can be easily legalized without any kind of punishment.

This unprecedented permissiveness is what has favored the consolidation of a business network composed of so-called surrogacy agencies, most of which are law firms, that work to legalize the illegal. Some people, such as Miguel González Erichsen, lawyer and founder of Universal Surrogacy, are clear that Spain will eventually regulate this. “Sooner or later, it will happen. The model we are committed to is the same as the Greek one: altruistic surrogacy,” maintains the company owner based in Malaga with an office in Ripollet (Barcelona).

When asked why he doesn't promote commercial surrogacy when he also operates in two purely lucrative markets—the United States and Ukraine—he responds, “It's still a very controversial topic. As soon as money is mentioned, some people back down.” That is why he considers that surrogacy must first be normalized through the altruistic formula before working to get the commercial one approved.

A business as illicit as it is unpunished

In Spain, surrogacy is prohibited by the 2003 Law on Assisted Reproductive Techniques. In 2022, the reform of the abortion law included the prohibition of mediation agencies from advertising their services, and in 2024, the Supreme Court issued a ruling confirming the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights and establishing that surrogacy “objectifies” babies and turns them into “a simple commodity subject to a contract” with a woman who “usually acts at the urging of a state of pressing need.”

Even so, mediation agencies continued to operate in Spain, and civil registries registered babies born by this method if the intended parents had a court ruling from the country of origin recognizing their paternity.

More than two years later, in January 2025, and after a campaign by several feminist organizations, the Women’s Institute published a report directed at the State Attorney’s Office. It requested it to take action against eight agencies: first for continuing to advertise their services to carry out surrogacy in countries where it is legal, and second for carrying out the necessary procedures to legalize the affiliation and adoption of the baby in Spain.

This unprecedented permissiveness is what has favored the consolidation of a business network composed of so-called surrogacy agencies.

Surprisingly, of the companies mentioned, one, Go4Baby, has been closed for four years, although it continues to operate in Spain through a telephone number based in Great Britain. Another, Lifebridge, has not been operating in the office it has registered as its headquarters for at least three years. Soñando juntos has no physical office at its registered address—a residential area in the Madrid town of Villanueva—and Surrobaby schedules appointments at coworking offices in Barcelona and Madrid. Meanwhile, many others operate with impunity and disregard the most repeated concept on their websites: transparency.

These websites often lack basic information such as tax names and addresses. Research reveals a tangle of shell companies created by front men, companies registered in tax havens such as Florida or the Seychelles, and companies that are defunct or that haven’t filed their annual accounts in years.

In 2018, a team from the Ukrainian Prosecutor’s Office began investigating the BioTexCom clinic in Ukraine after discovering that it barely paid taxes despite handling millions in revenue. Officials found that the company falsified documents proving the genetic relationship between babies and its clients when none existed. It also arranged marriages between gay men and Ukrainian women so they could benefit from Ukrainian regulations—which allow surrogacy for married heterosexual couples who prove they are unable to reproduce. The company even paid surrogates under the table, subjecting them to undignified conditions during pregnancies, and its owner charged his clients through accounts in tax havens, where the oligarch Albert Tochilovsky had dozens of companies registered.

The Ukrainian Prosecutor’s Office informed the diplomatic representatives of its main clients, including the Spanish one, that their citizens were allegedly acquiring babies under these fraudulent conditions. Then-Minister of Justice, Dolores Delgado, ordered the Spanish Embassy in Kyiv to stop registering these babies. Until then, it had been enough to show a DNA test proving genetic kinship with one of the intended parents.

Spanish couples who were already in Ukraine awaiting birth or who were already with their babies demonstrated daily in front of the Embassy, ​​and a large portion of the Spanish media produced reports highlighting the Spanish families’ distress and thus ignoring not only the rights of pregnant women and minors but the irregularities committed by BioTexCom.

Five years later, former Minister Delgado meets with us in the office where she currently works as the Human Rights and Democratic Memory Prosecutor. “There were difficulties here in carrying out that investigation. Since it's not a criminally prohibited activity, since it's not considered a criminal activity, there's a certain negligence in pursuing the crimes it does involve, such as (document) falsification, money laundering, possible injuries, violations of fundamental rights, possible human trafficking, and even child trafficking. These are the types of crimes we're talking about. Yet there have been political groups that have made a lot of noise defending surrogacy, regardless of the conditions under which it may occur.” This primarily referred to the defunct Ciudadanos party, which made the legalization of altruistic surrogacy one of its major political banners, but also to some parts of the Popular Party which are increasingly open to considering its regularization.

However, the Human Rights Prosecutor, in line with the position of the European Parliament and the UN Conventions, points out that “we must pursue this practice in countries where, through investigations, testimonies, and statements, we know that it is being carried out in a criminal environment.” To achieve this, the jurist specializing in transnational crimes believes it would be necessary to “establish prohibitive legislation whereby if these practices are carried out in certain countries, they will not be recognized under any circumstances. We could even go a little further in the sense that breaking this prohibition, that is, attempting or carrying out surrogacy in those countries lacking controls, could constitute a crime,” she concludes.

“There's a certain negligence in pursuing the crimes it does involve, such as (document) falsification, money laundering, possible injuries, violations of fundamental rights, possible human trafficking, and even child trafficking. These are the types of crimes we're talking about.”

The surrogacy lobby

Since its emergence on the national political scene, Ciudadanos raised the flag for the legalization of altruistic surrogacy, which, as explained in the report on Greece, ends up being commercial under the umbrella of being able to remunerate, as advocated in the bill it submitted to Parliament in 2017, “the expenses and inconveniences caused by the pregnancy.”

At the same time that the Ciudadanos party was losing ground in the election results, pro-surrogacy voices were gaining ground within the Popular Party. Senator Javier Maroto has been responsible for driving this ideological shift in a party that claims its Catholic foundations, at the same time that Pope Francis called for the abolition of surrogacy worldwide. Maroto, who declined to be interviewed on this matter, was responsible for marrying Eduardo Chaperón, spokesperson for Son Nuestros Hijos, the leading association of surrogacy clients in Spain, to his partner. The current secretary general of the Popular Party, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, has expressed to the media the party’s willingness to value its regularization, demonstrating how normalized this practice has become in recent years.

To this end, the role of well-known figures across the ideological spectrum has been fundamental. Singer Miguel Póveda and Ricky Martin, actor Javier Cámara, millionaire Carmen Cervera, television journalists Tony Cruanyes and Lluís Guilera, and soccer player Ronaldo are some of the faces who have normalized this practice with their decision. At the same time, a phenomenon has emerged in Europe and the United States of men and women seeking to become influencers by sharing their lives as parents through surrogacy on Instagram and TikTok. These include Javier Serna, Iván Ibáñez, and Serafín Llamas’ account, called Papá y Papá, or the surrogacy lawyer Beatriz Huerga. And in countries where it's legal, many women also advertise their pregnancies before giving birth.

After years of work by human rights organizations, feminists, and journalists specialized in surrogacy, the Government of Spain approved an instruction that prohibits the automatic registration of these babies through the court ruling of the country of origin. The intended parents will have to go through a judicial process in Spain to have their genetic filiation recognized in cases where genetic filiation exists. In cases where no genetic filiation exists, intended parents will have to go through an adoption process.

This report is part of the investigation into the surrogacy industry developed with funding from Journalismfund Europe and published in Spanish in lamarea.com.