Meet Our Intended Parents
Meet Josep & Roberto
Location: Barcelona, Spain
We’re Josep (43) and Roberto (38), two guys living in sunny Barcelona. We met back in 2016 on Tinder—yes, really, swiping right changed our lives, who knew?
Our first date turned into hours of conversation about our lives, our dreams, and our hopes for the future. It felt like we’d known each other forever, and we’ve been inseparable ever since. A year later we moved in together, and in June 2023, we finally made it official and got married.
These days, we both have stable, mostly remote careers—Josep at an online university, Roberto at an online pharmacy—which gives us a lot of flexibility, something we know will come in handy once there’s a baby in the mix. If there’s one thing that defines us as a couple, it’s that we don’t take our people for granted, and we try to make space for both the big milestones and the small, quiet moments in between. Traveling is a big part of that: from standing in awe in front of Petra in Jordan to celebrating our honeymoon across Australia and New Zealand, we always come home already planning the next trip.
Josep’s path started in television, creating content for hit Spanish reality shows, before his love of languages pulled him toward Chinese—not because he needed it, but because he wanted to learn something he couldn’t read or write a single word of. One trip to Beijing, barely a year into studying, gave him a story he still tells: a little boy in line kept staring and pointing him out to his parents, so Josep pulled out his passport and explained, in Chinese, where he was from—the looks on all three faces were priceless. He also spent eight years volunteering at a psychiatric hospital, which taught him more about emotional awareness—listening without judging, reading what someone else is feeling—than anything else in his life.
That same love of a good story, just with a darker edge, shows up in his lifelong passion for horror movies (Wes Craven is a particular favorite) and in his reading, mostly science fiction, fantasy, and horror—Stephen King and Brandon Sanderson among his favorites—though his all-time favorite book is Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar. When he’s not reading or watching something suitably spooky, he’s usually behind the stove (his carbonara is the stuff of legend) or at the gym, where daily workouts have gone from pure discipline to something he genuinely looks forward to.
Roberto shares that same curiosity for learning, starting with his own love affair with languages—English, then French, then a degree in Translation and Interpreting, later rounded out with Catalan and a bit of Italian. His French got its final polish during a summer running Space Mountain at Disneyland Paris, an experience that was equal parts magical and exhausting. He’s also a proud, card-carrying Swiftie who knows every album front to back, and an even more dedicated genealogist: what started as a college classmate’s project turned into a family tree of over 16,000 relatives. Ask him why, and he’ll tell you it’s less about the numbers and more about not letting people be forgotten—even a name and two dates from three centuries ago means someone existed, and now, someone remembers. When he’s not deep in the archives, his screen time is refreshingly all over the place, from prestige sci-fi like Dark and The Expanse to unapologetic comfort watches like Gilmore Girls and Charmed, dialogue memorized.
Our weekends usually start with chores and a good vinyl in the background—lately Gracie Abrams on repeat—maybe with a batch of Josep’s pancakes, before we head out to wander a new Barcelona neighborhood, hunt for vintage finds, and try a new brunch spot, especially when friends are in town. Quieter weekends mean a day trip to some small inland town instead. We also make a point of spending time with family, whether it’s Josep’s parents in Barcelona or Roberto’s in Salamanca, where we get to spoil our three-year-old niece Olivia, soon to become a big sister this November. It’s easy to picture a child fitting right into all of it—flipping pancakes with Josep, dancing badly to Roberto’s playlists, or getting pulled into cousin time with Olivia.
All of this—the weekends, the family, the noise and the calm—is what we hope to build toward with a child of our own. When we started exploring how to grow our family, we were immediately drawn to the altruistic surrogacy model in Canada, and how much care and
respect it places on the surrogate throughout the process. Practically speaking, we’re fully ready to take this next step: we currently have 7 PGT-A tested embryos, created with an anonymous egg donor, safely stored at the Utah Fertility Center, ready to be shipped to a
Canadian clinic the moment we connect with a surrogate.
We hope to build a warm, open, and honest relationship with the incredible person who helps us become parents—always respecting her privacy and whatever boundaries feel right for her. We’d love to be involved throughout the pregnancy, attend appointments when
possible, and be there in the delivery room for that milestone, and afterward, stay connected in whatever way feels most comfortable to her.
We also plan to be completely open with our child about their story from the very beginning—if Roberto has taught us anything, it’s that stories deserve to be known, not buried. We’ll make sure they grow up knowing about the extraordinary generosity that helped bring them into the world, and that our surrogate will always hold a meaningful place in that story.
Letter to Future Surrogate
Dear Surrogate,
Thank you for taking the time to read this and get to know us a little. It means more than you know.
We’re Josep and Roberto, 43 and 38 years old, and we’ve been together since 2016. We married in June 2023 and live in Barcelona, where Josep works at an online university and Roberto at an online pharmacy. We share a love for traveling—discovering new places together is one of our greatest joys—and also for music, especially Lana Del Rey, Beyoncé, and Taylor Swift.
Josep loves horror movies and stays active with daily workouts, while Roberto has a passion for languages (he speaks Spanish, English, and French fluently) and family history—he’s been building our family tree for over a decade and has traced more than 16,000 relatives, which always gives him a fresh anecdote to pull out at family gatherings (his family may or may not be tired of hearing them). Above all, we treasure spending time with our families, whether it’s with Josep’s parents in Barcelona or Roberto’s family in Salamanca, where we adore visiting Olivia, our three-year-old niece, who is about to become a big sister this coming November.
We met on Tinder—yes, really, swiping right changed our lives, who knew. What wasn’t common was how special that first date was. We talked for hours about everything: our lives, dreams, and hopes for the future. It felt like we had known each other forever, and from that moment on, we’ve been inseparable. A year later, we moved in together, and since then, we’ve built a life full of love, laughter, and shared dreams.
One of those dreams has always been to grow our family. When we first learned about altruistic surrogacy in Canada, what struck us most was how much care and respect it places on the surrogate throughout the entire journey. That resonated deeply with us—it’s exactly the kind of respect and gratitude we want to carry into this experience, and into how we’ll one day explain to our child how they came into the world.
As a couple, our weekends usually start with catching up on chores while some vinyl plays in the background—lately it’s Gracie Abrams’ latest album on repeat, very millennial of us. Then we’ll wander through a different Barcelona neighborhood, always ending up in some vintage clothing store or a shop full of quirky home knick-knacks we didn’t plan to buy, and try a new brunch spot—something we love doing even more when we have friends in town, which happens fairly often. If the weekend is a quieter one, we’ll grab the car and head to a small inland town for a day trip instead.
To us, the greatest gift we could give our child is a life filled with love, care, and plenty of shared hobbies—maybe not horror movies, though (sorry, kiddo, that one’s just for Josep!). But music, travel, and endless curiosity? Count us in. And just as important, we want our child to grow up knowing exactly how they came into this world: through an incredible act of kindness and generosity.
We are simply in awe of the courage and generosity it takes to embark on this journey. Without someone like you, our dream of becoming parents wouldn’t be possible.
Looking ahead, we would love for our relationship not to end at birth. We know everyone has different comfort levels here, but speaking for ourselves, we’d be more than happy to share updates and photos, and to celebrate our child’s major milestones together over the years. You will always be a meaningful part of our story, and we’d be honored to have you be part of theirs too.
Thank you for making it all the way to the end of this letter. We know it’s a lot to take in, and we really appreciate you taking the time. We’d love the chance to share even more with you, horror movie marathons and all.
With so much gratitude (and maybe a playlist, if you’re into that), Josep & Roberto
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