Bringing a RHD car into Spain is pretty straightforward....well it was before Brexit, so check out the maximum amount of time allowed before you MUST matriculate (import), it was around three months at one time but the rules change here based on direction of wind and other such things that no one understands.
So you bring your fully insured and taxed vehicle with a current MOT into Spain, and you want to keep it here. Well no problem, you will need your passport, an 'NIE' from one of the larger police stations or an office next door. The NIE is a document with a number that denotes you have some financial dealing in Spain, you need it for example to buy a TV , and of course tax and insure the car for example once your current insurance runs out, which it will do the moment you pay the import duty as you will be issued with a different set of number plates, or be given the documents to go and buy them yourself. Sounds easy enough right and to be fair it generally is, unless you own an 80, and of course choose the wrong province to ITV the car, and live in a different province. Don't get me wrong things are getting better but provincial rules that were never really sorted out many years ago still exist.
As some of what I am about to type (unable to drive presently so bored) is going to sound at best odd and at worst exaggerated, I will use my own experience with my own 80 going back around 10 years. So having lived here for a few years I decided to import an 80 I purchased from the UK, it had everything I wanted cloth seat, triple locked and it all worked! So once the 80 was here I drove it around for a month and after a thorough check I presented it for 'matriculation' that is start the import process. So as my Spanish language skills were at best crap (and not much better now), I took my American partner with me, she speaks English of course and was born to Spanish parents, her interest in languages soon had her speaking Spanish, Italian, French, German and just for good measure some Chinese and Russian, so translation is not going to be an issue. So the head honcho at the ITV station tells me he is very sorry but the rules have changed, I must keep the car legal in the country of origin for a minimum of six months. So I went back after the 80 had been in Spain six months, and was told by the same guy that the time before matriculation can occur had been extended to 1 year, so I duly went back with just one more week before my brief run out in the UK! I was told I need to have the car inspected in Alicante some 2 hours drive away and that is all motorway and it was going to cost a thousand euros plus fuel there and back just for an inspection to see if my 80 complied with Spanish road law, as he was telling me this I was watching cars being tested and passed that were so rusty you could get in the car without opening the doors!! ! So now I was getting into an argument about the 'goal posts' keep moving and back then I was not the most tolerant of people and my partner knew it would not be long before I gave the guy a good hiding as I got the feeling he did not like the English and felt he was taking the piss, and with my East End upbringing which shall we say was......... turbulent? My partner knew where this was going, so hauled me out and we decided to go around twenty miles into the neighbouring province to see if we faired any better? We entered the ITV station and once we obtained an CoEC or Certificate of European Conformity (80 euros) the car was given an ITV but herein starts other issues as we live in a different province to where the car was being inspected.
In Spain the Land Cruiser 80 regardless of model never had the third row of seats, the maximum amount of seats in a car is 7 so 80's only came into Spain new with 5 seats, and here I am with an 8 seater car! But there are contingency plans for this. Because the 8 is not allowed and you cannot remove one seat as the rearmost seat on the 80 are one and a half each, removing one will mean having only six and a half so is considered an illegal modification, so despite the rear seats being removable without tools if I took them all out for the inspection i.e. only five there would be less than that stated at the time of matriculation, so if I wanted to remove all the seats on a permanent basis I would have to go to a Toyota main dealer and have them release the clips and remove the seats, they then give me a document to say that the seats and brackets have been removed and this in no way alters the structural strength of the vehicle! Then the 80 has to go to the inspection station for them to confirm this and it is marked on the Ficha Technica (Vehicle data sheet), and then a copy is sent to the insurance company and that's that.........or is it? I use the 8 seats quite a lot, not drinking alcohol means I get to ferry friends about and get free soft drinks and lunch/dinner.
So I left the 8 seats in place however it would fail the ITV unless I removed one of the rearmost seat belts indicating I would only carry seven people...........in Almeria. So I had the car inspected the following year in Murcia where I live and it failed, seat belt missing! In Murcia a belt must be fitted for every seat, fortunately I had not thrown away the belt and refitted it and now the car was passed. But I live in Murcia where the law states if there are 8 seats there must be 8 belts and the car is insured for 8 people! So that's it.....er no. My house is in the campo (countryside) on the Murcia/Almeria border which cuts across the path outside my house, which means to leave the house I have no choice to cross the border into Almeria and then cross back into Murcia as the mud track turns back on itself, and then I reach the tarmac road, if I turn right all is well as I am entering Murcia and I have an 8 seater car with 8 seat belts however, if I turn left into Almeria I have to pull over and remove one of the seat belts....like I am going to do that!! And the answer is apart from one year I only have the car inspected in Murcia and leave all the belts in, if stopped in Almeria I have a good argument....well at least I think I have?
One year I could not get my car in for an inspection in Murcia, unlike the UK in Spain you are lucky if you live within an hours drive from the nearest ITV station although that has changed over the last couple of years and even small towns are getting a station, so the one year I took the car to be tested once more in Almeria and it was about to be failed because I had fitted a sunroof! When the 80 went on sale in many parts of Europe they either had a sunroof or AC and never both. I had to argue like hell to get the tester to understand that in the UK you can have both!! I now have a Ficha Technica that is amended to state that fact that my car was produced for the UK market as is! So I have a legal....ish car in Spain so everything from now on will be plain sailing right...wrong!
So in the UK if you go into say Fords, or Toyota or any other dealer or even a corner car spares shop the person who will serve you will be a someone who knows it is a spark plug you just put on the counter and give you however many you ask for, or you might say "Can I have a set of plugs for my Escort please?" And the guy will hand you a set of BP6ES plugs, or N9Y's for the over head valve model. Now this man at the counter (I am not being sexist here, just pointing out it is more likely to be a man), but he will be either an ex mechanic or some spotty kid who has just got his first car and is all over it like a bad fitting coat! He will be savvy and keen to please and will be in 'car learning' mode. In Spain it is different, here like most other countries plumbing is a trade, as of course is an electrician, and here so is 'office worker'. That is invariably a woman again no sexist slant here, it's just how it is. She will be brilliant at working the computer, making the printer work, and having filing skills beyond anything you would expect.....most of the time. As an office worker and being able to operate a computer and sort invoices she can get a job anywhere that those skills might be needed....including behind a car spares counter! So in you go with your 'bujia' or spark plug and she has no idea what it is! And no parts are given out unless you present your Ficha Technica or log book come data sheet and this goes without saying whether it is a woman or man behind the counter. So I go into the dealer or spares shop and tell them what I want and more often than not there will be a female trained 'office worker', and when they get to know you they turn the screen around and slip the keyboard over to you so you can order your own parts, of course I leave them to do the paperwork!
I mentioned the office worker being good most of the time, in a lot of official buildings there are quite a few male office workers and like the women they are generally competent in their job. Now you rarely get a reminder for your vehicles yearly inspection but this is improving, road tax on the other hand they simply just take if from your bank and you rarely get a warning. There is no incremental road tax, that is it is billed from the 1st of January until the 31st of December this is in all provinces as far as I know however, you do not get billed for it until around April because it takes awhile for them to work out what they are going to charge based on the income from the government, that is each province makes it's own decision on road tax cost, it is not unusual for someone living in Murcia to tax their car from their friends house in another province where the tax could be as much as 40% cheaper. As an aside it is the car that is insured and not the driver, assuming you have a full licence you can get in any insured car and legally drive it, although recently they have increased the age you can hire a car, and some insurance companies have put age limits for example no under 21's without permission, which rarely costs more if it is for example a son or daughter over for a couple of weeks holiday.
So, back to office workers, I noticed the car tax payment had been taken from via my statement (never the easiest to understand by the way), and then it was taken a second time and before I could get to the new tax office which was opened (because the town hall was deemed to be a little lax at collecting local taxes and road tax being one of them), a third payment was taken each one IIRC 230.00 euros, cheap by UK standards but not the point, so I quickly notified the bank that no more road tax payments to be made until I had sorted this out. Of course making an appointment is like pulling teeth, in the meantime I get an 'Aviso' which is a note to say the post office is holding a document for me. So collecting the document it advises that I have not paid the road tax and was being fined 20.00 euros so now owed 250.00! So I gets to the tax office and the trained office worker explained that the bank has stopped the payments so I am to be fined. I assured her I had paid the road tax and as I get 5% of my cars running costs (not 21% as for my work van), my documents were with the accountant (in Spain you hand in business document every three months although the 'Asseroria' (accountant) prefers them monthly for which they charge me 60.00 euros per month at the same time! With bank statements in hand and documents from the accountant I head back to the tax office, and in case I am getting my Spanglish wrong I take my partner, and hand all the documentation over and insist on a refund of not only the 460.00 euros but also the 20.00 euro fine. She takes the papers and points at the computer screen and says it is all correct and it is my fault for being 'Muy rico' or very rich and should not own so many cars! She turns the screen around so Ana and I can see it and sure enough there is my Land Cruiser,,,,and there is another....and another ..and...yes there were EIGHT Land Cruiser's listed under my name and address and NIE number.........and all had the same registration number!! It was only when I pointed that out that she realised the data base had the data columns with the wrong parameters, for example it should be impossible to have two cars with the same registration number. It took another three months to get my money back....oh and as I had stopped payments to the tax office my income tax rebate was withheld, they recognised the error at the tax office, but no problem they would correct it the following tax year! Now you know why the NIE number is so important, it is used to monitor all income and outgoings and pretty much everything that happens around your life that has to do with money.
And steering away from cars for the moment, if you need a document from say the town hall to register with a doctor or whatever, always ask if there is just the one document you need or you might find yourself in a queue the following day waiting for another document because you did not ask and they certainly would not offer. You would think a country that is dripping in bureaucracy they would be good at it!
Spain is an easy country to fall in love with and I have, but if you are an impatient person then readjust before you get here as much as you can, I have been here around sixteen years and still find I have to walk away from certain situations before my blood starts to boil, you really must learn to chill, and never ever throw away any piece of paper you are given, write when and where you got it and file it away, I guarantee you will need it in a year or two!!
Regards
Dave
So you bring your fully insured and taxed vehicle with a current MOT into Spain, and you want to keep it here. Well no problem, you will need your passport, an 'NIE' from one of the larger police stations or an office next door. The NIE is a document with a number that denotes you have some financial dealing in Spain, you need it for example to buy a TV , and of course tax and insure the car for example once your current insurance runs out, which it will do the moment you pay the import duty as you will be issued with a different set of number plates, or be given the documents to go and buy them yourself. Sounds easy enough right and to be fair it generally is, unless you own an 80, and of course choose the wrong province to ITV the car, and live in a different province. Don't get me wrong things are getting better but provincial rules that were never really sorted out many years ago still exist.
As some of what I am about to type (unable to drive presently so bored) is going to sound at best odd and at worst exaggerated, I will use my own experience with my own 80 going back around 10 years. So having lived here for a few years I decided to import an 80 I purchased from the UK, it had everything I wanted cloth seat, triple locked and it all worked! So once the 80 was here I drove it around for a month and after a thorough check I presented it for 'matriculation' that is start the import process. So as my Spanish language skills were at best crap (and not much better now), I took my American partner with me, she speaks English of course and was born to Spanish parents, her interest in languages soon had her speaking Spanish, Italian, French, German and just for good measure some Chinese and Russian, so translation is not going to be an issue. So the head honcho at the ITV station tells me he is very sorry but the rules have changed, I must keep the car legal in the country of origin for a minimum of six months. So I went back after the 80 had been in Spain six months, and was told by the same guy that the time before matriculation can occur had been extended to 1 year, so I duly went back with just one more week before my brief run out in the UK! I was told I need to have the car inspected in Alicante some 2 hours drive away and that is all motorway and it was going to cost a thousand euros plus fuel there and back just for an inspection to see if my 80 complied with Spanish road law, as he was telling me this I was watching cars being tested and passed that were so rusty you could get in the car without opening the doors!! ! So now I was getting into an argument about the 'goal posts' keep moving and back then I was not the most tolerant of people and my partner knew it would not be long before I gave the guy a good hiding as I got the feeling he did not like the English and felt he was taking the piss, and with my East End upbringing which shall we say was......... turbulent? My partner knew where this was going, so hauled me out and we decided to go around twenty miles into the neighbouring province to see if we faired any better? We entered the ITV station and once we obtained an CoEC or Certificate of European Conformity (80 euros) the car was given an ITV but herein starts other issues as we live in a different province to where the car was being inspected.
In Spain the Land Cruiser 80 regardless of model never had the third row of seats, the maximum amount of seats in a car is 7 so 80's only came into Spain new with 5 seats, and here I am with an 8 seater car! But there are contingency plans for this. Because the 8 is not allowed and you cannot remove one seat as the rearmost seat on the 80 are one and a half each, removing one will mean having only six and a half so is considered an illegal modification, so despite the rear seats being removable without tools if I took them all out for the inspection i.e. only five there would be less than that stated at the time of matriculation, so if I wanted to remove all the seats on a permanent basis I would have to go to a Toyota main dealer and have them release the clips and remove the seats, they then give me a document to say that the seats and brackets have been removed and this in no way alters the structural strength of the vehicle! Then the 80 has to go to the inspection station for them to confirm this and it is marked on the Ficha Technica (Vehicle data sheet), and then a copy is sent to the insurance company and that's that.........or is it? I use the 8 seats quite a lot, not drinking alcohol means I get to ferry friends about and get free soft drinks and lunch/dinner.
So I left the 8 seats in place however it would fail the ITV unless I removed one of the rearmost seat belts indicating I would only carry seven people...........in Almeria. So I had the car inspected the following year in Murcia where I live and it failed, seat belt missing! In Murcia a belt must be fitted for every seat, fortunately I had not thrown away the belt and refitted it and now the car was passed. But I live in Murcia where the law states if there are 8 seats there must be 8 belts and the car is insured for 8 people! So that's it.....er no. My house is in the campo (countryside) on the Murcia/Almeria border which cuts across the path outside my house, which means to leave the house I have no choice to cross the border into Almeria and then cross back into Murcia as the mud track turns back on itself, and then I reach the tarmac road, if I turn right all is well as I am entering Murcia and I have an 8 seater car with 8 seat belts however, if I turn left into Almeria I have to pull over and remove one of the seat belts....like I am going to do that!! And the answer is apart from one year I only have the car inspected in Murcia and leave all the belts in, if stopped in Almeria I have a good argument....well at least I think I have?One year I could not get my car in for an inspection in Murcia, unlike the UK in Spain you are lucky if you live within an hours drive from the nearest ITV station although that has changed over the last couple of years and even small towns are getting a station, so the one year I took the car to be tested once more in Almeria and it was about to be failed because I had fitted a sunroof! When the 80 went on sale in many parts of Europe they either had a sunroof or AC and never both. I had to argue like hell to get the tester to understand that in the UK you can have both!! I now have a Ficha Technica that is amended to state that fact that my car was produced for the UK market as is! So I have a legal....ish car in Spain so everything from now on will be plain sailing right...wrong!
So in the UK if you go into say Fords, or Toyota or any other dealer or even a corner car spares shop the person who will serve you will be a someone who knows it is a spark plug you just put on the counter and give you however many you ask for, or you might say "Can I have a set of plugs for my Escort please?" And the guy will hand you a set of BP6ES plugs, or N9Y's for the over head valve model. Now this man at the counter (I am not being sexist here, just pointing out it is more likely to be a man), but he will be either an ex mechanic or some spotty kid who has just got his first car and is all over it like a bad fitting coat! He will be savvy and keen to please and will be in 'car learning' mode. In Spain it is different, here like most other countries plumbing is a trade, as of course is an electrician, and here so is 'office worker'. That is invariably a woman again no sexist slant here, it's just how it is. She will be brilliant at working the computer, making the printer work, and having filing skills beyond anything you would expect.....most of the time. As an office worker and being able to operate a computer and sort invoices she can get a job anywhere that those skills might be needed....including behind a car spares counter! So in you go with your 'bujia' or spark plug and she has no idea what it is! And no parts are given out unless you present your Ficha Technica or log book come data sheet and this goes without saying whether it is a woman or man behind the counter. So I go into the dealer or spares shop and tell them what I want and more often than not there will be a female trained 'office worker', and when they get to know you they turn the screen around and slip the keyboard over to you so you can order your own parts, of course I leave them to do the paperwork!
I mentioned the office worker being good most of the time, in a lot of official buildings there are quite a few male office workers and like the women they are generally competent in their job. Now you rarely get a reminder for your vehicles yearly inspection but this is improving, road tax on the other hand they simply just take if from your bank and you rarely get a warning. There is no incremental road tax, that is it is billed from the 1st of January until the 31st of December this is in all provinces as far as I know however, you do not get billed for it until around April because it takes awhile for them to work out what they are going to charge based on the income from the government, that is each province makes it's own decision on road tax cost, it is not unusual for someone living in Murcia to tax their car from their friends house in another province where the tax could be as much as 40% cheaper. As an aside it is the car that is insured and not the driver, assuming you have a full licence you can get in any insured car and legally drive it, although recently they have increased the age you can hire a car, and some insurance companies have put age limits for example no under 21's without permission, which rarely costs more if it is for example a son or daughter over for a couple of weeks holiday.
So, back to office workers, I noticed the car tax payment had been taken from via my statement (never the easiest to understand by the way), and then it was taken a second time and before I could get to the new tax office which was opened (because the town hall was deemed to be a little lax at collecting local taxes and road tax being one of them), a third payment was taken each one IIRC 230.00 euros, cheap by UK standards but not the point, so I quickly notified the bank that no more road tax payments to be made until I had sorted this out. Of course making an appointment is like pulling teeth, in the meantime I get an 'Aviso' which is a note to say the post office is holding a document for me. So collecting the document it advises that I have not paid the road tax and was being fined 20.00 euros so now owed 250.00! So I gets to the tax office and the trained office worker explained that the bank has stopped the payments so I am to be fined. I assured her I had paid the road tax and as I get 5% of my cars running costs (not 21% as for my work van), my documents were with the accountant (in Spain you hand in business document every three months although the 'Asseroria' (accountant) prefers them monthly for which they charge me 60.00 euros per month at the same time! With bank statements in hand and documents from the accountant I head back to the tax office, and in case I am getting my Spanglish wrong I take my partner, and hand all the documentation over and insist on a refund of not only the 460.00 euros but also the 20.00 euro fine. She takes the papers and points at the computer screen and says it is all correct and it is my fault for being 'Muy rico' or very rich and should not own so many cars! She turns the screen around so Ana and I can see it and sure enough there is my Land Cruiser,,,,and there is another....and another ..and...yes there were EIGHT Land Cruiser's listed under my name and address and NIE number.........and all had the same registration number!! It was only when I pointed that out that she realised the data base had the data columns with the wrong parameters, for example it should be impossible to have two cars with the same registration number. It took another three months to get my money back....oh and as I had stopped payments to the tax office my income tax rebate was withheld, they recognised the error at the tax office, but no problem they would correct it the following tax year! Now you know why the NIE number is so important, it is used to monitor all income and outgoings and pretty much everything that happens around your life that has to do with money.
And steering away from cars for the moment, if you need a document from say the town hall to register with a doctor or whatever, always ask if there is just the one document you need or you might find yourself in a queue the following day waiting for another document because you did not ask and they certainly would not offer. You would think a country that is dripping in bureaucracy they would be good at it!
Spain is an easy country to fall in love with and I have, but if you are an impatient person then readjust before you get here as much as you can, I have been here around sixteen years and still find I have to walk away from certain situations before my blood starts to boil, you really must learn to chill, and never ever throw away any piece of paper you are given, write when and where you got it and file it away, I guarantee you will need it in a year or two!!
Regards
Dave
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