Buying a Car in Spain

We have guests who are renting our apartment over the winter for 5 months and they would like to buy a car once they arrive in Spain.  Do they need any particular paperwork or licences to do this.  They have asked about 'Certificate of Residency' but I'm not sure what this is.  Any help would be appreciated.  Thank you.

Yvette - they will need to get an NIE number to buy a car. I don't know whether they will be able to get one if they are just on holiday - although I suppose they must be able to as many home owners aren't resident either. Not difficult to get - just tiome consuming. Ours took 4 weeks to come through - and that was done urgently.

We also had to produce our Padron registration - and that is a bit more tricky as this is what proves you have a property in Spain and you have to produce your escritura to get this. . . . Although I do have friends that weren't asked for their padron when buying a car.

We bought our car using our UK license - don't think you need a Spanish one.
May need to have a Spanish bank account to make payment from - we certainly were asked for our bank account details so that road tax could be taken automatically each year.

Insuring it might also be tricky. Ditto for paying the Road License - as the way things work in Spain is that whoever owns it in  a particulr month has to pay for the full year (can't remember when the month is - February I think).

They will have to use an address to buy it from and register it and insure it at. I would be unhappy about someone using my apartment address - but I'm just paranoid. I see all sorts of problems that will proabably never happen! However . . .

Some friends of ours have had major problems with the car they sold over 18 months ago. They sold it to a garage and it is still in their showroom but our friends keep getting demands to pay the road tax and get the ITV done (MOT) as the garage hasn't actually changed the registered owner. One friend I talk to on another forum got done by the police for 15 years back road tax as for whatever reason the re-registration didn't happen properly when they sold it.

Hugh-Man may be able to give you more info as he's done it more recently than I have in Murcia (I'm in Alicante) so may bde able

Thanks for the info Bev.  Sounds very complicated.  Maybe they could just rent for 5 months although that would be very expensive.

Before purchasing our own property we rented for 18 months or so.  We obtained our NIE numbers from the Spanish consulate in London before moving out to Spain and registered ourselves on the local padron as soon as we moved into our rented property (we were told you don't have to own a property to be on the padron but must register if you are living long term in Spain).  We bought our car from the Ford dealer opposite Dos Mares within 2 months of moving to Spain.  We didn't (and indeed couldn't) obtain Spanish Residency until we had lived here for 6 months so residency was not a requirement of the purchase.  At that time we still had our UK driving licences.

Hope this helps your renters.

Some help here http://www.tumbit.com/how-to-guides/articles/6-google-ad-module-how-to-guides-rich-content-300x250.html

Hello, here in our Ford dealer, to buy a car new or second hand we are asking; Copy of passports, Copy of Nie numbers, or Padron and if the adress that apears in them is the developers old adress( not the police new address ) we nead also a copy of your water or electric bill to register the car in the proper address also the spanish bank details. 50 % of our custumers are from Britain so the info I am giving you is correct.

Best regards,

Jose Antonio.

Road Tax is variable depending on a) horsepower b) area where you live - although there is a min and max.
Note that whoever owns the vehicle on 1st January is liable to pay for the whole year.

Our road tax this year was €116 on an Opel Astra Estate 1.7 diesel.

But it varies greatly - I live in Alicante in Almoradi but if I lived in Adsubia it would be about 2/3 rds the cost!