Guides: importing and registering a car in Spain
We import cars to the Costa Blanca and run the technical side of putting an imported car on Spanish plates. That means the same four or five questions arrive every week by WhatsApp. These pages are those questions answered properly — with the figures we actually use and the source of each one, so you can check us rather than trust us.
Start here
How long can you drive a foreign-plated car in Spain?
If Spain is your normal residence you cannot, and the clock is 30 days — the Agencia Tributaria says so on its own import pages. If your normal residence stays abroad (the EU test is more than 185 days a year), you keep your home plates. Includes what changes for a UK car and what you can be fined for.
Green plates (placas verdes): when you need them, what they cost
Temporary DGT plates that let a car with no valid registration reach the inspection station. You need them when the foreign inspection has expired or the plates are gone — and you do not need them when the car can legally drive there as it stands. On the 900 € service they are an optional extra; on the import lines they are included.
Spain’s registration tax (IEDMT): how the number is produced
Not a percentage of what you paid. A percentage of a fiscal value from the ministry’s own table, reduced for age, with CO₂ deciding the band and your padrón deciding whose rate applies. With one case carried to the cent: 47,200 € table price → 2,956.54 € of tax.
The import ITV: what the station checks on a foreign car
The inspection that turns foreign paperwork into a Spanish ficha técnica. What has to exist on paper first (certificate of conformity or an engineer’s report), what the station checks on the car, why modifications stall files, and the tariff: 110.86 €, VAT-exempt.
If you already know what you need
These are the service pages rather than guides — what we do, for what fixed price:
- The imported-car service — what our 900 € + VAT covers, and what is paid to the administration.
- What it costs, line by line — which lines are taxes and which are ours.
- A UK car in Spain — the third-country route, customs included.
- Bringing a car from Germany — what the file involves.
- Is importing from Germany worth it? — the arithmetic, including when the answer is no.
- A car from the USA — customs, homologation, and what we cannot price in advance.
- An imported motorcycle — what differs from a car.
- The Spanish ITV explained — the ordinary annual test, for a car already on Spanish plates.
How we write these
Every figure on these pages comes out of the same calculator we use for client quotes, and each one carries its source and its date. Where we do not have a source we are willing to stand behind, we say so instead of rounding to something plausible — which is why you will see «we do not publish a figure for this» in a few places. We are a private management service in Dénia, not a public body and not a law firm; where a decision has money or a deadline attached, the document issued to you by the administration is the one that counts.
Ask about your own car
A photo of the registration document usually answers more than an hour of reading. WhatsApp +34 644 324 195