Spain has become the indisputable favourite destination for European fertility patients who face issues to access egg donation treatments in their home countries (Wyns et al. 2021). Egg donors in Spain receive one of the highest rates of financial compensation across Europe (Pennings et al. 2014), yet very little is known of their own experiences on this multibillion-dollar industry. The aim of this research is to identify the social and economic conditions that contribute to women’s decision to ‘donate’ their eggs in exchange for money in Spain in order to place them in the context of deep economic and reproductive inequalities between women across Spain and Europe, informing understandings of the pressures on women’s health in contemporary society. At a broad theoretical level, this thesis examines how women’s bodies are interpolated within neoliberal discourses and practices currently organizing the Spanish economy and fertility industry. The dissertation is based on a 6-month ethnographic fieldwork with its primary location in the city of Barcelona, where I undertook semi-structured interviews to 25 egg donors and 25 clinicians, focus groups, and participant observation in a fertility clinic.

This research is pioneering in providing key understandings of the functioning of the expanding Spanish reproductive bioeconomy. By focusing on the voices of egg donors and crossing their views with those of clinicians, the thesis illuminates the complex economic, sociocultural, and historical choreography that has taken Spain to be one of the most important outsourcers of eggs and treatments.

Through these aims and methods, thus, this dissertation analyses how the Spanish egg donation industry is orchestrated to contain women’s imaginaries, bodies, biographies, and eggs so that they can be converted and travel across the global bio-market circuits. In doing so, this thesis contributes to scholarship on tissue economies, reproductive labour, sociotechnical imaginaries, and Spanish extractive industries.