COPY LINK

For members

BREXIT

OPINION: Not all Brits in Spain who didn’t exchange UK driving licences are at fault

Brexpats in Spain head Anne Hernández, who has helped hundreds of Britons in Spain get their UK licences exchanged for Spanish ones, explains how bureaucratic setbacks have prevented many from exchanging and why UK nationals should avoid so-called loopholes to continue driving in Spain.

Published: 3 May 2022 13:17 CEST

OPINION: Not all Brits in Spain who didn't exchange UK driving licences are at fault

Some British residents here have been misadvised and, looking for loopholes, believe that their International Driving Permit will cover them. It does not, warns Anne Hernández. Photo: TravelPriceWatch/Unsplash

It is easy to criticise the latest developments regarding the UK driving licences of British residents in Spain.

I have heard plenty of comments of the sort of ‘you’ve had six years to exchange it’ or ‘why is Spain doing this to us?’.

All in all, it is quite unfair to pass such comments without understanding the personal circumstances of those who have still been unable to exchange their UK licence.

Firstly, not all Britons living in Spain have been here since before the Brexit vote in 2016.

Many applied for residency post 2020 and some residence applications have been unexpectedly rejected, thereby delaying the licence exchange application.

There are UK licence holders whose licence renewal invalidated their initial application for an exchange to a Spanish licence, as they were given a different issue number.

And admittedly, there are those that have rested their hopes on the British authorities reaching a deal with Spain and not taken the advice of the UK Embassy in Madrid vis-a-vis registering intent to exchange or preparing to take a driving test in Spain.

Before December 30th 2020, a British resident here could register their intention to exchange and were given one year to do so.

They needed an NIE to register which some did not have because they were still in the throes of applying for their residencias or because they had not arrived here before then.

After the UK left the EU, the Spanish Royal Decree 38/2020 legally extended permission for British residents to drive until April 30th 2022.

And they can still exchange provided they registered their intention before December 30th 2020 and the UK validated their licence before January 1st 2021.

Otherwise the UK driving licence for British residents here ceases to be valid after six months from date of arrival or from the date of obtaining residencia.

This includes but is not limited to the USA, Canada, Russia, Australia, New Zealand, Africa, South America, Iceland, Greenland, and third countries of which the UK is now in the same category.

Spain and the DGT have changed nothing in their laws and rules, except as an act of goodwill during the Covid lockdown extending the period to use UK licences thereby allowing the applicant time to pass a theory and practical driving test. The theory test can be done in English but the practical is in Spanish.

With the vast number who will be needing to take their test, I rather envisage there will be long waiting lists at the driving schools where the theory tests have to be done and passed before the practical can be applied for, so it will not be a quick fix.

Knowing how inconvenient the loss of one’s driving licence can be, some British residents here have been misadvised and, looking for loopholes, believe that their International Driving Permit will cover them, it does not.

The IDP is not a stand-alone document, it has to accompany a valid driving licence.

Others think that by renting a Spanish car they are covered, they are not.

Others, I don’t doubt, will be surprised when they are caught driving their vehicle without a valid driving licence which not only invalidates the insurance but can carry a fine of up to €6,000 and potentially a 6 month prison sentence in the worst cases.

The recent update from the British Embassy came on April 29th but there is really nothing to update.

The negotiations have been ongoing for some time and we are assured will continue to try to bring a successful conclusion.

However, if the use of your vehicle is imperative, they are recommending you apply for your Spanish driving licence tests and not wait for the outcome of the negotiations.

This does not affect visiting, tourist motorists or those sent here to work on a temporary basis from the UK. Visitors to Spain are able to use a UK licence for up to six months from the date of entry, without the need for an IDP.

One word of warning, if you are not a resident but are on the padrón, we recommend you deregister if driving your UK plated vehicle here because being on the padrón is equivalent to being a quasi resident and you are not permitted to drive a non Spanish plated vehicle if you are a resident.

We have dealt with cases where the vehicle was impounded and big fines imposed.

Member comments

Anonymous - 6 May 2022 at 13:27 CEST

At last, an article that shows up the holier than thou evangelists for what they are and finally points out what a lot of us have been saying..
‘Many were not able to transfer to a Spanish licence prior to the cut off date because we hadn’t moved in time and got our NIE and residencia etc. etc. etc.

Kindly don’t tar all of us with the same brush.

Become a Member to leave a comment.

Good tourist, bad tourist: How to travel responsibly in Spain

Barcelona resident David Mar doesn’t travel, but he thinks about tourism every day.

Tourists crowd the buses — essential for movement in a hilly neighbourhood like his. They leave trash for residents to discover in the morning. They shout and sing at night and wander drunkenly through the residential streets, ambling into backyards and pulling down laundry on clotheslines.

“It’s a disturbance that goes from when you wake up in the morning until you go to bed at night,” he told The Local Spain. “You don’t feel welcome in your own neighbourhood.”

Mar lives in Turó de la Rovira, on a 262-metre hill that towers over the city.

A viewpoint atop the hill called Los Bunkers de Carmel has gone viral on TikTok for its sweeping city views, bringing hordes of tourists to come drink wine, watch the sunset, and sometimes party into the early morning.

But for the residents of the surrounding Carmel neighbourhood — among Barcelona’s poorest — the consequences of this tourist explosion have been severe.

Mar was involved in a physical altercation with a group of four Australians, after he confronted them for tipping over parked motorcycles.

And last June a 76 year-old man was assaulted by a group of seven English-speaking youths after he tried to stop them from jumping a fence that had been put up around the Bunkers.

Such events are commonplace in Carmel, Mar says, with the post-pandemic massification of tourism provoking an unstoppable flow of Instagram-like-hungry travellers, fuelled by an increasingly lucrative industry whose interests often conflict with those of local residents.

“It collides directly with the most basic rights of those who live here,” Mar says. “Our right to housing, our right to transportation, our right to rest peacefully.”

With some 1.3 billion international arrivals globally in 2023, more people are travelling for pleasure than ever before in human history.

But as excessive crowds stress infrastructure and locals find themselves pushed out of their own communities, prevailing attitudes towards travel must be reconsidered if global tourism is to continue growing sustainably.

“Tourism isn’t a right, it’s a decision that you make,” Mar says. “And if you do it, you must be aware of the consequences it can generate.”

A couple uses a selfie stick to take a picture next to a banner warning tourists on drought alert in Catalonia, near Sagrada Familia basilica in Barcelona. (Photo by PAU BARRENA / AFP)

Empathy abroad

Bartolomé Deyá Tortella, a researcher and the Dean of Tourism Faculty at the University of the Balearic Islands, says few tourists consider such consequences.

Instead, they embrace their inner hedonist and focus their vacation time on maximum pleasure for minimum price. This mindset might cause a tourist to forget their values and do things they’d never do at home.

“We all become capitalists when we practice tourism,” Deyá told The Local. “You think, ‘I paid for this, I’m on vacation, I’m having my moment of pleasure, I worked the whole year for it.”

Such thinking could explain why someone might respect quiet hours in their own neighbourhoods, but shout drunkenly in the streets late at night while on vacation.

Or why on a trip to Mallorca, where Deyá lives and works, a tourist might feel compelled to take a 10-minute shower — despite the water-stressed Mediterranean island’s near-drought conditions — while residents routinely shower in a minute or less.

Failure to consider saving water or respecting quiet hours comes down to lack of empathy, Deyá says, and our tendency to other the people whose communities we enter while traveling.

“Act as if you were in your own home,” he says. “If when you’re in your own city you don’t shout in the street because you know your neighbours are sleeping, why do it when you’re traveling?”

Social sustainability

Much has been said about environmental sustainability, but it’s easy to forget the social impacts of travel; how our interactions with local people and economies can change that society.

“When every one of us travels, it implies that the places where we came from are transformed, the places we pass through are transformed, and obviously, so are the places we arrive to,” Manuel de la Calle Vaquero, Vicedean of the Faculty of Commerce and Tourism at Complutense University of Madrid, told The Local Spain.

With this in mind, the most sustainable way to travel is by using one’s presence to positively impact the local community.

Or in other words, to leave a place better than you found it.

“When you jump on a plane, it’s important to make sure that trip counts for something positive,” says Justin Francis, founder of Responsible Travel, a holiday company that collaborates with local partners to plan socially and environmentally sustainable vacations.

“I advise people to fly less, keep short trips flight-free – and, when you do fly, stay in a place longer and travel in a way that does as much good as possible,” Francis says.

Anti-gentrification banners addressing were already hanging from balconies in Barcelona back in 2017. (Photo by Josep LAGO / AFP)

Neighbourhood colonisers

One of the most significant ways in which tourism can alter the social landscape is through accommodation.

Not long ago, tourists and residents in Spain did not typically mix, with tourists sticking near their hotels, rarely straying into residential zones, Deyá says.

But today’s tourist has matured, and now expects novelty; an “authentic” experience that they can convince themselves distinguishes them from the thousands of other tourists expecting the same.

Nowadays they live among residents, in apartments instead of hotels, utilizing short-term rental platforms like Airbnb, which has led to the dissolution of boundaries between a city’s tourist and local zones.

Vaquero describes this new kind of tourist as the “anti-tourism” tourist, in the sense that they’re not interested in the sort of tourism promoted by governments and travel agencies, but instead consider themselves the explorers of new “authentic” destinations outside the typical tourist sphere.

“The one who wants to leave the traditional tourist circuit and supposedly goes looking for ‘authentic’ neighbourhoods — that tourist is obviously the coloniser,” Vaquero says.

The boom in short-term vacation rentals has led to what’s been dubbed the “Airbnb effect” in neighbourhoods worldwide, in which residents are slowly replaced by a constant flux of tourists. For landlords, vacation rentals can be far more lucrative than renting to residents, thus incentivizing them to evict long-term tenants in order to list their properties on Airbnb.

This is exactly what happened to Emanuele Dal Carlo. His landlord didn’t want to renew the lease on his small Venice apartment because they could make more renting it out on Airbnb. Like so many other Venetians, Dal Carlo had to move to the mainland.

To better understand the cultural erosion he saw happening to his city as a result of Airbnb, Dal Carlo enlisted the help of researchers to conduct a study, through which he discovered only 2,000 of the 3,300 Airbnbs in the city were registered with the government, and many were rented by foreign hosts with zero connection to Venice.

This means that much of the money tourists spend on accommodation never lands on the ground, thus eliminating any potential benefit to the local economy.

“What’s wrong is that the money available from tourism is not fairly distributed between workers and residents,” Dal Carlo says.

Dal Carlo now runs Fairbnb, an ethical Airbnb alternative which promotes “community-powered tourism.” Hosts are certified local, and the platform fees are put directly towards a social project in the local community, like food redistribution or sustainable energy initiatives.

As a tourist, the best way to avoid feeding the problem is by avoiding short term rentals when possible, Dal Carlo says, and instead booking accommodations with local businesses, like small independent hotels or traditional bed and breakfasts.

And if you absolutely must use Airbnb, Dal Carlo suggests booking with local hosts.

“If you’re traveling to Venice and your host is from Finland, ask yourself some questions,” he says.

An elderly local man on crutches waits to cross as a group of tourists using Segways squeeze by and into the narrow streets of Barcelona’s Gothic Quarter. (Photo by PAU BARRENA / AFP)

Whose fault?

In Spain, anti-tourism protests have crescendoed in recent weeks. The travel industry, it seems, has grown beyond its means, and locals are taking note.

To some degree, the problem can be traced to poor planning on the part of local governments and the unchecked expansion of algorithmic platforms like Airbnb.

Deyá points out that many government entities in Spain have welcomed tourist money, pursuing marketing campaigns without investing in adequate preparation.

“Tourism is the typical sector where many governments say, ‘ok, let’s leave it, because this works. Don’t touch it,’” Deyá says. “But there’s been no planning, there’s been no strategy.”

Back in Barcelona, the city’s public transport authority was involved in the promotion of the Carmel bunkers through its Bus Turistic webpage, encouraging tourists to come see the “spectacular views over Barcelona.”

The promotion was taken down on April 16th after continued anti-tourism protests from the Turó de la Rovira neighbourhood council, of which Mar is a member.

But as is the case with so many industries in a crowded world full of contradictions, the individual cannot be absolved of all responsibility, as one’s choice to participate in harmful systems enables their continuation.

No law or tourist tax will compel tourists to act with empathy, and the absence of such regulations should not be used to justify one’s bad behaviour abroad.

“The problem is that we’re hypocrites, and we think that it’s someone else who has to solve the problem,” Deyá says.

Mar, who’s never been much of a traveller himself, is no longer interested in traveling internationally after seeing what tourism has done to his city.

“So much of my city has become inhospitable for residents,” he says. “Because we’re truly suffering from it here in Barcelona, the concept of tourism disgusts me more and more.”

READ ALSO:

SHOW COMMENTS

Url copied to clipboard!