Every day, 77 people in Spain sign up to save a stranger's life
Spain's bone marrow donor registry is closing in on 533,000 volunteers, and 2025 set a record for transplants from unrelated donors.
Every single day this year, 77 people in Spain have quietly decided that if a stranger ever needs them, they’ll be there. They are the country’s new bone marrow donors.
According to Spain’s Ministry of Health and its National Transplant Organisation (ONT), the Spanish Bone Marrow Donor Registry (REDMO), run by the Josep Carreras Foundation, now counts 532,996 volunteers.
Faster than last year
Between January and August, 18,766 new donors signed up. That’s ahead of 2025’s pace, when 24,829 people joined over the whole year, about 68 a day.
That generosity saves lives. In 2025, Spain carried out 3,619 blood stem cell transplants. A record 794 of them came from unrelated volunteer donors. Since 2012, 7,557 patients in Spain have received a transplant from a non-relative, and 1,163 of them were children.
Spanish donors also help far beyond Spain’s borders: in 2025, 486 of them made donations for patients in Spain and 29 other countries.
One of the world’s big registries
REDMO is the fifth-largest donor registry in Europe and the 13th in the world. The ONT thanked every donor, and every mother who donates umbilical cord blood, for “an act of generosity that can transform lives”.
