A 41-year-old woman from Catalonia is carrying Spain's first adopted embryo as a result of a program that has won fertility doctors the surprise support of the Roman Catholic church.
Eva Tarrida told her family that she is three months pregnant, and the foetus comes from an egg fertilised seven years ago and frozen in liquid nitrogen since then.
Ms Tarrida is the first mother-to-be from an embryo adoption program set up last year at the Marques Clinic in Barcelona. The program aims to match women who want to have children with the extra embryos produced by couples undergoing in vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment.
There are 30,000 frozen embryos stored at fertility clinics in Spain.
For Ms Tarrida, the chances of natural conception were remote because her partner had been having chemotherapy. The Catholic church bans assisted reproduction techniques such as IVF but has called on followers to save the frozen embryos