hi can anybody help me as.. in june this year i had my english car switched over to spanish plates and had a MOT (with a young lady that I payed for helping me) when the mot was over the man gave the young lady all paper work to do with mot. A week later i got all relevant paper work fm the young lady and left all this in my glove compartment. I saw the said young lady recently and asked her why i wasnt given a sticker to go in my car to say I had had a mot and she replied it was no longer necessary to do this?? on looking at my paper work i realise I have nothing to say that i even had a mot?
surely this is not norm????????

If you are talking about the ITV which is the test done here in Spain then you should have a sticker to put into your car windscreen. I am not sure of the validity of the paperwork you have if you dont display the sticker and a policeman should notice??

You should have a sticker which you must display and your "Ficha Tecnica" should have been stamped by the ITV station.

Seeing this thread has prompted me to ask...does anyone know...Is an English MOT valid in Spain? We will be taking our car with us when we move to Spain next year.

First you MUST have a piece of paper which states your car has passed the ITV test, and you must carry it at all times else you can be fined. This "helpful" lady has done you a disservice. The ITV centre will give you another if you can produce the pass paper and receipt they issued.

All countries MOT's are valid for 180 days when abroad, you must return the car to its country of origen after 180 days to stay legal - you did ask!!!

Dave

Patsy,

The ITV test you are referring to is, presumably, the one that is required as part of the importation procedure.

Was you vehicle less than four years old when you imported it. If so it does not yet need to pass the routine Spanish ITV test so the sticker would not have been issued.

If it was more than four years old then you should have a sticker and the ficha tecnica should have been stamped showing the date of the test and the date when the next test is due.

Lionda,

A foreign registered vehicle must be road legal in its country of origin including MoT, insurance and vehicle excise licence so it will be valid. However, when it expires, unless you import it onto Spanish plates, you will need to return to the UK to renew it as a Spanish ITV certificate is not valid in respect of a foreign registered vehicle.

The car must be imported and Spanish plated and ITV`d if in Spain for more than 6 months.

However, if you have applied for residencia, then you must get you car re registered ASAP, don't think the 180 days applies then, think it's down to just 30 days, when you get it re registered onto Spanish plates then the UK MOT becomes invalid, so you have to get an ITV done, in any case it's part of the re-registration process. I did see a letter recently about soemone who was importing a kit car from the UK, not sure whether that would ever get registered here as they normally require it to be in the same condition as when manufactured, not sure how they would work that out from a rebuild.

No, the 180 days still applies but if you do the changeover within 30 days of applying for residencia then you dont have to pay the re-registration tax which is either 7% or 12% depending on the car.

Most people only find this out when it is too late!

I had to register on the padron to buy a Spanish car Fred ..... my british car wasn't ready to get in the 30 days, but its 11 years old ... do you know if I will still have to pay re reg tax as I've been told I may not have to.

As it is based on the notional value of the car as decided by Hacienda, it is probably going to have a very low or even zero value.

It may be that because it is over 10 years old it is automatically zero but I am not personally aware of that.

Ah well, I can but hope

Hi Mitzyboy,

Registration on the "Padron" is not the same as "Residencia" so you may still be OK.

Regards,

John.

You learn something new every day! I was under the impression that when you registered on the padron you were registering as a resident in Spain. I'm wrong then? Sorry if its going a bit off topic

Just to clarify things....would it be simpler (and cheaper) to sell our car and buy a Spanish registered one when we get over. Seems like a lot of messing about to me!

Sorry Patsy...didn't mean to hi-jack your thread but your question got me thinking about whether it is worth taking our car over.