Sunset Beach Torrevieja, CB

A bit of help and advice please. We know some of you have driven over and we would be grateful for the benefit of your experience. We complete on our house in the uk on Thursday 5th April and after a few family visits and a few days spent seeing places we haven't seen we will be driving down at the end of April or beginning of May. We hope to rent until the house is ready. It is our intention to drive because we have a dog and we are not prepared to give him the stress of being stuck in the hold on a plane and rather than go by ferry we can take our time driving. We can also stop to pee and poo the dog when necessary.

We intend to reregister our car in Spain when our current tax expires next year ( I know a lot of you will say it is better to sell our car in the UK and buy another in Spain) but we need it to get there and it is fairly new with a low mileage and we would probably lose too much money for a cash sale in the UK.

The question is do we have to permanently export our car with the DVLA here to be able to reregister it in Spain or is this unnecessary. Can we just go to wherever it is to register with Spanish plates and then get Spanish insurance. Sorry it is long winded but wanted to cover the points.

Thanks Pete & Mave (No 32)

Hi, Claire and myself  drove over via calais, There are are so many places to stop for the dog and for a coffee.

We left the uk at 6 am on the saturday and arrived in torrivieja at 4.30 on sunday which was are rental destination But most people take more time (up to 3 days).

We have a 3.8 ltr mpv and we spent around 400E  on tolls and petrol + ferry.

As for the spanish registration and export in the uk, I have told the uk that the car has been exported but the car has tax ,M.O.T and uk insurance as you wont be able to insure your car in spain until it has been registered and you cant register your car until your are on the padron.

If I can help with anything else please email

Hi Folks,

Just thought that I might share what I have found on the Uk registered car situation since we drove out  in LHD Honda Civic in September last year. We drove down from Bilbao (P & O, Pride of Bilboa from Portsmouth) and took two days over it stopping just souith of Madrid on Day 1. We did not hurry but managed the journey easily but if you are coming this way, particularly study you route round Madrid. We used Autoroute to make sure we knew what we were doing.

The car was taxed until February but our UK Insurance agent told us thar Norwich Union would only cover us for three months on Spanish soil so we obtained new insurance in December even though we were UK Plated on permanent export. There are many companies who advertise in the English press here who do this. Make sure you get a letter from your UK insurer regarding  your no claims status but it is more expensive than the UK. WE used a company called Abbeyagate but there. are many others,

Our tax expired in February so we are going through the reregistration process for Spanish plates using the  British garage in Almoradi to do the whole process. We do not have Padron but we checked and are told that  a copy of your Deed Simple is acceptable instead. You can also buy a new (or used car using this-we have) This is in early stages so we do not know the result yet but your car will certainly new head lights that point the right way 

Hope this is useful

Robin Bayliss ( Calle Vizconde de Ros, 14)

hi pete & mave

just reading through some old postings and started to wonder if you ever arrived at your destination or did you get washed away by all the rain?

the weather in ireland has been excellent for the last two weeks - wall to wall sunshine. we are heading out on friday 27th april so if you are around we can share a glass of wine either in the sunshine or under an umbrella

vincent & brona (plot no. 28)