The place where those who have grown tired of Tinder look for a partner
Although they may seem like they're from another era, marriage agencies survive in the 21st century thanks to their discretion and personalized attention.
BarcelonaTinder, Bumble, Happn, Grindr, Badoo, Meetic, AdoptaUnTio and many more. Dating and partner-finding apps have revolutionised the way humans interact in terms of sexual and emotional relationships in the West. These types of apps are so common that it even seems impossible to have other ways of getting along beyond trading images and chatting on the mobile phone screen. In this sense, the data is clarifying, because it is estimated that 40% of new couples formed in the State have met on Tinder. But although they may seem from another era, physical marriage agencies have not disappeared, quite the opposite. This sector, which was created in Catalonia in the sixties, exists and works as well as in past decades. There are far fewer of them and they do not compete head-to-head with the millions of users who use the digital environment, but they claim to offer an extra level of attention and personalisation that no machine can ever give you.
"We put ourselves at the service of people who are at a point in their lives when they want to find a partner with whom to walk a path together and, for whatever reason, they haven't found one," says Maria del Carme Banús, founder and owner of SamSara, the oldest active agency in Barcelona, three years old. Banús started this business when she was forty years old, at a time of professional change. "We opened our doors on Valentine's Day in 1995, we're still going," she explains.
The moment of opening the agency was the golden age, since it coincided with the rise of the divorce law in the State, which had been approved 15 years earlier. "In any case, today we are in the best moment - Banús points out - because there is more need than ever to not be alone." In its beginnings, it worked especially with people who had become widows and single people who were already mature. "Before, they were told bachelors in a derogatory way, but now it is almost seen more as a quality."
Looking for compatibility
Maria, whose name has been changed to remain anonymous, was divorced 12 years ago. She lives in a village in the Pyrenees, and after years without a new relationship, she decided to take the plunge. Her friends recommended the most popular digital apps that are mostly used for dating. But it didn't go well: "It caused me a huge drop in self-esteem, because it was like a shop window where you only looked for casual sex." It took a year until she deleted them from her phone and decided to go back to the Internet, but this time on the search engine. "I searched for a marriage agency, and that's how it all started." A little over twelve months after that decision, Maria had her first date with Pedro, with whom she has been getting along very well for over a year: "We are 100% compatible, we didn't even expect that," she says.
But she didn't manage to find Pedro on the first try, but rather followed a long procedure that also went through a trial and error stage. "I had an interview that lasted more than two hours," explains Maria, who paid around 1,200 euros during her time at the agency, where she met five men before finding her soul mate. "The questions are asked by psychologists who know what they're doing, they gauge you perfectly," recalls the girl, who was not asked for any kind of photograph: "You have to follow their recommendations without seeing the other person. In fact, they even recommend that you delete your profile picture from WhatsApp because they don't judge you.
Professional intuition
The interview with the agency's psychologists is where the key to success lies, since it is from there that the profile is built on all areas of the client's life and how they would like their partner to be. Once done, it is analyzed carefully, the matches with possible candidates are found and a meeting is proposed. It is because of this level of detail that specialists call it personalized presentations, and it is always between people who are looking for the same thing.
Nowadays, the most common clients of agencies like SamSara are people who put their hope in the service of experience and personalization. "In order to bring people together there are two important factors: the work of professionals and intuition, which after thirty years of career you have quite fine-tuned," laughs María del Carme Banús, who personally conducts a second interview with each person who walks through the door of her agency. "I am not infallible and sometimes I fail, but it has been many years and I have exhaustive knowledge of our database," concludes the owner.
The differential fact
When it comes to deciding which option each person chooses to find a partner, the marriage agency is by far the most expensive if we compare it with the tools that the Internet offers you. Dating apps began in the mid-2000s and were a revolution, which ended with the vast majority of agencies that existed in Catalonia. From then on, a few, very few, survived, always looking for a differentiating feature. "Those of us who sign up with an agency ask for three essential qualities: discretion, professionalism and knowing that the person they find you will be looking for the same thing as you," explains Maria. In this sense, when you sign up for a service like this you expect to have constant monitoring of how things are going.
On the other hand, those who choose this route are usually someone who is looking for a stable partner. They are often people who have been rejected by the apps and who in these spaces look for experts with personalized attention. "Today's society offers many ways to conceive a relationship, but people don't come here looking for casual sex," explains Banús, who in 2017 was certified as matchmaker in New York. She says that her agency guarantees that the people in its database "are who they are and want what they say they want." Confidentiality is extremely important for most clients of a marriage agency, since they are people who, normally due to their work, do not want to have public photos on social networks with thousands and thousands of users.
In 2025, what they promise you is not to waste your time, says the founder of SamSara. "People are increasingly less interested in meeting people with whom they are not compatible. On the other hand, we will guarantee this 100%," she concludes.
