Vehicle information sheets in English – If you can find them!

“The DGT provide lots of advice about their procedure, in English… If you can find them!”

Spanish documentation may be a daunting prospect to many of us to consider, but when it comes to motoring, the Director General of Traffic (DGT), is trying to make things easier by providing information in a variety of languages, including English.

The only slight problem is that you have to have a little bit of an understanding of Spanish in order to find them.

The DGT provide a wealth of information about driving on their website, dgt.es. If you go to their front page, dgt.es, look down the page, under the scrolling banner, until you see the word, “Trámites”. The website is constantly evolving, but currently, the second option in the list is named, “Hojas informativas de Trámites”. Click on that sentence. Once the page has loaded, you will see a list of languages, and at the bottom, the word, “Inglés”. Click on this word (or any of the other languages if you prefer French or German for example).

Having clicked on your choice of language, for which we are going to assume is English, you are now presented with another list, in Spanish, which is again constantly growing.

There are some key phrases to look out for, the most important forms you might need, but feel free to look around, click them and save them all if you wish, they are all free, and they all have guidance notes so you know what to fill in and the process for each procedure.

The most important forms you are likely to need, we think, are:

Cambio titularidad vehículo – Change of vehicle ownership

Baja temporal. Alta del vehículo en baja temporal  – Temporary deregistration of a vehicle.

Baja definitiva por traslado de vehículo a otro país – definitive deregistration of the vehicle due to transfer to another country.

Informe del vehículo – Vehicle report (important for checking the history of a vehicle before buying it).

Duplicados y renovaciones del permiso de circulación – Duplicates or renewals.

Baja definitiva – Definitive deregistration.

There are other information sheets and as you look around the DGT website you might find other information in English too, including a very informative section explaining how to oppose a traffic fine, if you genuinely weren´t the driver at the time, but we can deal with that another time, for now it´s for you to get downloading and learning.