A friend of mine was stopped by the local Guadia last night, and was asked for the usual things, she has a resedentcia, she showed her English License, and was told she needed a Sapnish one.
I was under the impression that it did not matter as long as you were in the EEC.

Please advise me so I can giver her the bad news or the good news that she need not worry.

Thanks for youre time.

An english photo licence is quite acceptable and legal in Spain due to EU legislation.
I'll see if I can find the link and post it in a moment

Here you go, in the free beer section, almost to the bottom
http://britishexpats.com/forum/showthread.php?t=422251

Thanks the lot for that, ill go and tell her now.

Thanks again

Hi

Sorry to be a party pooper but the law has not been ratified yet (will be in 2012) and the Free Beer is wrong. There has been many threads on this and the simplest answer is CHANGE YOUR LICENCE or DO NOT ADMIT TO A RESIDENCIA.
If your spanish is not that good, are you really going to try to argue the finer points of Spanish law to avoid the 315 euro fine (I assume that in this case the fine has not been issued).

Dave

Oh OK Dave, but why do I have a letter issued by the Spanish Traffic department saying it IS acceptable then. I'm confused

You must apply for a Spanish driving licence within six months of declaring yourself as resident in Spain. As a resident in Spain the address on your driving licence should be your Spanish one and not your UK one now that you are no longer resident of the UK.

David

So ..... do you know why I have that letter David that I mentioned above?
I've akso read the EU directive that was posted here somewhere and dont remember it saying it was a draft.

Id be pleased for clarification

Hi

No. 1 the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing (this is Spain after all).
No. 2 There used to be a scheme to register your english licence by having your NIE no. embossed on the reverse, but I have not heard about this being done recently. They did attempt to consolidate the licences of europe in 2006, but it failed, next attempt is 2012
Dave

Yes that was for "The European Licence" wasn't it
But this is the interim measure as I understand it.

I know the letter has been used sucessfully when people have been stopped and this issue has been raised.

There is no address on my Spanish driving licence, just name, nationality, expiry date and permissible driving catagories.
Graham

On your Spanish one, no address. OK.

However on your UK one it does have an address. One at which you are no longer resident. That's is the issue.

Even in the UK you would have had to apply for change the address on your driving licence if you were moving from one address to the other.

I love these threads.

EU member states have up to 2012 to before applying the new directive for a single unifying EU driving licence.

Licences issued before the new directive is applied will have a transition period of 26 years. Even with this delay all driving licences will be the new EU style by 2032.

Wheres your info coming from David .... JDR will want to check his sources
But you ARE still talking about the unified licence, not the interim measures?

There's a light version of my info at the Telecinco website:

http://www.informativos.telecinco.es...o/dn_22698.htm