SHARE
COPY LINK
For members

DRIVING

Do tourists have to pay Spanish traffic fines?

Almost 80 percent of foreign drivers fined for traffic violations in Madrid never pay up. But why is that, what could you be fined for, and how likely are tourists to actually have to pay Spanish traffic fines?

Do tourists have to pay Spanish traffic fines?
Can tourists in Spain get away with not paying traffic fines?(Photo by JAIME REINA / AFP)

In 2015, the European Parliament closed a legal loophole that allowed foreign drivers to easily escape traffic fines while abroad by (in theory) sending the paperwork to their country of origin and improving cross-border information exchange between authorities.

However, it hasn’t entirely worked. In Spain, tourists racking up speeding and parking tickets has long been a problem. According to Spain’s Dirección General de Tráfico (DGT), the French, Portuguese and Germans are the ones who commit the most traffic offences in Spain, usually for speeding. But getting them to actually pay their fines (multas) once they’ve left the country is proving difficult, and EU regulation doesn’t seem to have helped much.

For many years in Spain, foreign drivers simply left the country and prayed that the traffic fine wouldn’t find its way to their home country. If it did, many simply ignored them.

In Madrid for example, estimates suggest that as many as 80 percent of foreigners fined in Madrid never pay their traffic fines. That means tens of thousands of fines go unpaid each year, and that the authorities miss out on several million Euros in extra revenue.

Just 44,935 of the 232,849 total traffic fines have been paid (19.29 percent) — meaning we can say that roughly 8 out of every 10 traffic fines given to foreigners in the capital go unpaid. Though there’s no country-wide data, we can assume that the figure at the national level is somewhat similar, or to give a conservative estimate, at least above 50 percent.

Madrid’s city council has since brought in a payment collection service in view of trying to recoup the high level of non-payment from abroad, and the EU regulation to try and shore up this problem was consolidated in Spanish law in 2015, through Royal Legislative Decree 6/2015, which updated Spain’s Traffic Law.

So, the bureaucratic framework to chase fines is there, at least, but practically speaking, it doesn’t seem to happen much. That begs the question, do tourists have to pay Spanish traffic fines? Which fines can’t foreign drivers escape, and how do they pay?

READ ALSO:

Traffic fines in Spain

The Club Europeo de Automovilistas (CEA), regulates the cross-border exchange of traffic information, and it establishes eight main types of driving and traffic offences which will be communicated across borders, regardless of the European country where the offence is committed. These offences are:

  • Speeding
  • Failure to wear a seat belt or other approved restraint system.
  • Running a traffic light, stop sign or yield sign.
  • Driving with alcohol levels higher than those established by regulations.
  • Driving under the influence of narcotics, psychotropic drugs, stimulants and any other substance with similar effects.
  • Not wearing a helmet when riding a motorbike.
  • Driving in a forbidden lane, improper circulation on the hard shoulder or in a lane reserved for certain users.
  • Using a mobile phone or other communication device while driving.

READ ALSO: What are the drink driving limits and penalties in Spain?

Rental cars

For readers who’ve been fined while driving a rental car in Spain and wondering (hoping) if they can get away with it, know that the authorities can still identify you.

The EU Directive on cross-border exchange of information applies to all vehicles, whether private or rental. If a rental car picks up a traffic violation and is fined in Spain, the company will communicate the offender’s details to the competent authorities in order to process the fine. In fact, it may actually be more likely that you’ll have to pay it off this way, because rental companies require identification and address details.

In addition to the fine, you usually have to pay an additional surcharge for an administrative fee for “fine Management” charged by the rental company. In the event that your infraction leads to a traffic accident with damage to the vehicle, the damages will be excluded from the insurance liability limitation, and you’ll have to pay an additional surcharge on top of it.

What to do if you get a traffic fine in Spain?

So you got caught speeding in Spain and actually received a traffic fine at your home address. What happens now? You generally have three options: firstly, pay up (with a possible discount); secondly, appeal the fine; and thirdly, if you weren’t driving, prove you weren’t the driver.

Pay fine

The DGT handles all traffic fine payments in Spain. If you’re abroad, the easiest way to pay will be online, which you can do here, but you can also pay via phone, app, or in person if you wish.

If you pay within 20 days, you usually receive a 50 percent discount on the total amount.

Appeal fine

If you do not agree with the fine, you can appeal by submitting a plea or appeal with the evidence you consider appropriate.

You can do all this via the DGT website.

Not the driver?

If you receive a traffic fine from Spain and you weren’t the driver (whether someone else was driving your car or there was a mix up with dates and drivers at the rental company) you can challenge it. As per the DGT website: “If you were not the one driving the vehicle at the time of the offence, you can identify the driver within 20 days of receiving notification of the fine.”

In the case of minor offences identifying the driver is voluntary and if you pay the fine it will be understood that you were the driver. In the case of serious or very serious offences identifying the driver is compulsory. You have to identify the driver even if you are the driver. In these cases, if you do not identify the driver it will be considered a very serious offence, which may result in a large fine, and you will not be able to benefit from the 50 percent discount for paying off the fine within the voluntary period.

All the information on how to identify and report the driver is available here via the DGT. 

Do tourists have to pay Spanish traffic fines?

In conclusion, it seems that many foreigners fined for traffic offences in Spain never pay it off. However, the legal and bureaucratic and frameworks to chase offenders across borders (or send their fine to their home address, at the very least) do exist, and if the authorities in Madrid are taking further steps to chase up foreign drivers escaping justice, it seems like a crackdown could be beginning.

If you do speed or jump a red light in Spain, you’ll have to see if the bureaucratic machine kicks into gear and gets your fine to your home country. Of course, one way that you’ll definitely have to pay the fine is if you are caught red handed by a police officer.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.
For members

TOURISM

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

“The problem is we’re hypocrites, and think it’s someone else who has to solve the problem,” argues tourism academic Bartolomé Deyá. So what can holidaymakers in Spain do at a time when tourists are getting an increasingly bad reputation?

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. 

READ ALSO: Barcelona removes route from Google Maps to keep tourists off local bus

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.

READ ALSO: Spain’s tourism earnings seen hitting new record despite growing anger

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.

READ ALSO: Why does hatred of tourists in Spain appear to be on the rise?

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.

READ ALSO: Who really owns all the Airbnb-style lets in Spain?

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. 

READ ALSO: Spain urges regions to limit Airbnb-style lets in ‘stressed rental areas’

“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.”

READ ALSO: Where in Spain do locals ‘hate’ tourists?

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. 

READ ALSO: Barcelona restricts access to popular sunset viewpoint to stop tourist parties

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