Spain Medical Tourism: IVF, Donor Eggs and What Americans Should Know

Spanish fertility clinics ran 168,372 IVF cycles in 2023, and about one in five of the babies born from that year's treatments arrived in another country, to patients who had flown in for care, according to the Spanish Fertility Society's national activity register, presented with Spain's Ministry of Health in December 2025. That's the short version of why Spain comes up when people talk about medical tourism in Europe, and most of the story is fertility treatment, IVF with donor eggs in particular.

If you're reading this, you may already have a US quote in a folder somewhere, or you've been told your own eggs aren't likely to work and you're trying to figure out what comes next. This guide covers why so many people go to Spain for that, what Spanish law says about egg donors, how to find out who's actually treating you, what tends to get added to a quote, and what to sort out before you fly home. One thing up front: JetWell's network doesn't include a clinic in Spain today, so this is a guide to the country, with no booking pitch attached.

Why do people go to Spain for IVF with donor eggs?

Mostly because Spain has done a lot of it for a long time, under a law that keeps donors anonymous. ESHRE, the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology, has estimated that around half of all egg donation treatments in Europe happen in Spain, most of them for patients from abroad, in a fact sheet based on 2013 data.

The volume shows up in the wider numbers too. ESHRE's 2017 report on European IVF activity, which used 2014 registry data, put Spain first in Europe with 109,275 treatment cycles, ahead of Russia and France (ESHRE, 2017). That's an older snapshot, and the 2023 Spanish register shows the count has grown a lot since.

We haven't found an independent, published comparison of Spanish and US prices for donor-egg IVF that we'd stand behind, so we're not going to quote a savings figure here. Our IVF cost by country guide has the sourced ranges we have found, and the only number that really counts is the one on a written quote.

What is egg donation?

Egg donation is IVF using eggs from another woman. The donor takes hormones so her ovaries mature several eggs, the eggs are collected and fertilized in the lab with your partner's or a donor's sperm, and an embryo is transferred to your uterus. You carry the pregnancy and give birth, though the baby doesn't share your genes. In Spain it's called ovodonación.

The 2023 Spanish register also shows how clinics there handle transfers. In 90% of transfers using donor eggs or frozen embryos, a single embryo went back in, according to the SEF's press release on the register. And 39.2% of all IVF cycles used frozen embryos, which matters for planning, as you'll see below.

What does Spanish law say about egg donors?

Spain's assisted reproduction law, Law 14/2006, says donation is anonymous and can't be commercial. Donors can be compensated for inconvenience and expenses, and no more than six children can be born in Spain from one donor. The clinic picks your donor; you don't.

That last part surprises a lot of Americans used to US donor catalogs with photos and baby pictures. Under Spanish law, you won't learn the donor's name and she won't learn yours. The clinic matches a donor to you, so ask which traits it matches on and what it'll tell you about her.

The six-child cap is tracked nationally. In an April 2025 note, Spain's National Commission on Assisted Human Reproduction set out what happens to a donor's stored eggs or sperm once that limit is reached: they're withdrawn. Embryos already made for you can still be used in your later cycles.

Anonymity is worth thinking through before you go, more than any other part of this. A child born from a Spanish donor won't be able to get the donor's identity from the clinic. But consumer DNA tests are common in the US, and anonymity on paper doesn't stop a match turning up years from now. Some parents are fine with that. Some decide they'd rather use a US donor who agrees to be identifiable. Either way, it's a decision for you to make at home, before any money changes hands.

Who actually does my IVF in Spain?

Ask for the name of the doctor who'll run your cycle and the doctor who'll do your transfer, in writing, before you pay. Then look each one up. Spain's medical colleges and their national council, the CGCOM, publish a public lookup of registered doctors, which the council describes as the guarantee that a doctor meets the legal requirements to practice.

With donor-egg IVF, a lot of the work happens in the lab, where you'll never see it. These questions are worth sending by email so the answers come back in writing:

1. Which doctor is responsible for my cycle, and will the same doctor do the transfer?
2. Who leads the embryology lab, and is the lab on site?
3. How is my donor matched to me, and what will I be told about her?
4. If a fresh transfer isn't possible, how many embryos will you freeze, and where will they be stored?
5. Who do I contact, by name, if I have a question once I'm home?

Are there any add-ons once I'm there?

There can be, and with IVF they tend to sit outside the headline cycle price. Before you agree to a plan, ask whether each of these is inside the written quote:

1. Fertility medications, for you and sometimes for the donor
2. ICSI, where a single sperm is injected into each egg in the lab
3. Freezing your extra embryos, and the yearly fee to keep them stored
4. A later frozen embryo transfer, if the first one doesn't happen or doesn't work
5. Genetic testing of embryos, which is often priced per embryo
6. Your monitoring scans and blood tests at home in the US before you fly

The storage fee is the one people forget. If 39.2% of Spanish IVF cycles already use frozen embryos, there's a fair chance you'll leave embryos in a freezer in Madrid or Barcelona, and that bill keeps arriving every year. Ask what it costs, how it's paid, and what happens to the embryos if you stop paying. In JetWell's network, everything on your Care Plan is price-locked and anything not on it is extra, so the Care Plan is the document to read line by line before you pay anything.

How do you get to Spain from the US?

Madrid and Barcelona get most of the nonstop flights from the US, on Iberia and several US airlines. Iberia added a daily Newark to Madrid route from March 29, 2026, on top of its JFK flights, according to AirlineGeeks.

Spain is in the Schengen Area, so Americans can visit for up to 90 days in any 180-day period without a visa, as Spain's consular service explains. Your passport needs to be valid for at least three months past the day you leave the Schengen Area. The EU's ETIAS travel authorization isn't required yet, and no start date had been announced when we checked.

Sources: SEF national activity register, 2023; ESHRE; Law 14/2006, BOE; Spanish consular service; US Department of State, 2026.

The State Department rates Spain Level 2 for terrorism and unrest. Its August 2026 update raised only Ceuta, the Spanish city on the North African coast, to Level 3 after a large, uncontrolled arrival of migrants from Morocco, and it left the rest of the country where it was (US Department of State, 2026). Ceuta sits across the Strait of Gibraltar from mainland Spain.

Photo by Taisia Karaseva on Unsplash

Spain's wider health system scores well, too. The OECD's 2025 country note found Spain ahead of the OECD average on 8 of 10 key measures of health and risk factors, though 62% of Spaniards said they were happy with the availability of good care, a shade under the 64% OECD average (OECD, Health at a Glance 2025).

What happens if something feels wrong after I'm home?

Call your Spanish clinic and a US doctor straight away, and don't wait for an email reply. The CDC's Yellow Book chapter on care abroad asks US clinicians to find out about every treatment a patient had on a trip, so they'll want to know exactly what was done in Spain.

You'll spend the two-week wait after a transfer at home. Before you fly out, find a US OB-GYN or fertility doctor who's willing to see you once you're back, and agree with the Spanish clinic on who orders your pregnancy blood test and who reads it. Bring home your full cycle notes, the medication plan you're on, any scan images and the embryology report, all in English. If you've left embryos in Spain, keep the storage contract with your records, along with a named contact at the clinic. Our guides to getting your records from a clinic abroad and finding a US doctor for follow-up go through both steps, and IVF success rates abroad explains how to read the numbers a clinic sends you.

Spain sits alongside other European options like Budapest, and our IVF abroad guide covers the treatment itself in more depth. JetWell's network doesn't include a clinic in Spain today. In JetWell's model you don't pick a clinic off a list: you tell Jett what you want, and JetWell matches you with a clinic in its network, named on your Care Plan. If Spain is one of the places you're weighing, ask Jett about your options and say what you'd like done.