Vehicle registration plates of Spain

Vehicle registration plates of Spain currently use the format nnnn LLL where:

• nnnn is a sequence number from 0000 to 9999,
• LLL is a "counter" comprising three letters, which increments after the sequence number reaches 9999. The vowels A, E, I, O and U, plus Q (which can be easily confused with O) and the special Spanish letter Ñ, are not used. This leaves the 20 consonant letters B, C, D, F, G, H, J, K, L, M, N, P, R, S, T, V, W, X, Y and Z for use on the registration plates. This allows for 20³ possible three-letter combinations (from BBB to ZZZ), which means a total of 80 million registration numbers are possible in this system.

This format, introduced on 18 September 2000, is used nationwide, so there is no way of knowing where the vehicle was registered. The letter combination gives a rough idea of when the vehicle was registered, but is less reliable for determining its age, as imported second-hand vehicles are registered in the same way as new models.

The three-letter combinations reached the H series (beginning HBB) in late December 2010. At the current rate (of approximately 5 "big" series per decade) the system will exhaust around 2040.

The plates themselves are white with black characters, front and back, with a blue strip on the left containing the 12 stars of the flag of Europe and the country identifier E (for España). This strip is compulsory. The plates are usually rectangular and wide in shape, but there are also square-like plates for motorcycles, while some cars have a narrow plate inset (such as at the back of the SEAT 600).

7137 CHW

5000 DPJ

Previous systems

Two previous systems have been used, both of which were province-based.

1900 to 1971

The first system, introduced in 1900, consisted of a letter code denoting the province the vehicle was registered in (the full list of codes appears below), followed by a sequence number of up to six digits. The codes were normally made up of the first one or two letters of the province name or the name of the provincial capital (many provinces are named after their capitals), under the provisions of a 1926 regulation. In the earliest days, some provinces used three-letter codes, but these were abolished after 1926.

This system came to an end in October 1971, by which time both Madrid and Barcelona were approaching the number 999999. Older vehicles with such registrations, usually with five- or six-digit numbers, can still be seen on Spanish roads.

In the later years of this system, many plates were white with black characters. Today, there are a few rare cases where the blue EU country identifier strip is also carried.

1971 to 2000

The second system used the format XXX-NNNN-YY, where XXX was a one- or two- letter province code or a two- or three-letter special code (such as ET for army cars and DGP for police cars), NNNN was a sequence number from 0000 to 9999 (always four-digit numbers, padded with leading zeroes if necessary), and YY was a one- or two-letter "counter" series which incremented after the sequence number reached 9999; for instance, M-9999-BC was followed by M-0000-BD.

Some serial combinations were not used, such as AA (i.e., A-9999-Z was immediately followed by A-0000-AB). Particularly, letters A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I,J, K, L, M, N, O, P, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y and Z were allowed in one-letter series or as the first element of two-letter series, whereas only the letters B, C, D, F,G, H, J, K, L, M, N, P, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y and Z were used as the second element of two-letter series. The reason to forbid vowels A, E, I and O from the second element of two-letter combinations was apparently to avoid the remote possibility of forming a few possibly-offending Spanish words when combined with some province codes, such as MA-LA "bad one" or CU-LO "arse", even though some other possibly-offending combinations, such as KK (resembling caca, meaning "shit" in Spanish) or PN (resembling pene, meaning "penis"), or politically-charged combinations such as HB (cf. Herri Batasuna) and PP (cf. Partido Popular), were not skipped and were in fact eventually issued in Madrid and Barcelona. All series involving consonants Q and/or R were skipped. Letter R was "restored" into common use in the following new three-letter system, whereas all five vowels were entirely dropped from this new system (see section below). Letter Q, on the other hand, has never been allowed in any way on Spanish number plates; the apparent reason being its resemblance to vowel O and digit 0 (even though letter D also resembles both, and letter O resembles digit 0, and neither were similarly banned from the system, so plate numbers such as O-0000-O —with six glyphs looking identical as 0-0000-0 in the die fonts used for the plates—, and barely distinguishable pairs such as B-0000-DD vs. B-0000-OD, were issued). Some otherwise "forbidden" combinations (particularly, those involving R or ending in one of the skipped vowels) were exceptionally used in a few particular cases, such as on serial combinations on some special types of cars (such as RA, RB... on some police cars) or in province codes (such as BA, CE, GI, GR, LO, MA, OR, PO, SA, TE, VI, ZA) or special codes (such as EA for airforce land vehicles).

This system lasted until September 2000, by which time the province of Madrid was again running out of registrations, its serial combinations approaching ZZ. The system was not completely exhausted in any province at the time of the system change, however, since the last series issued in Madrid was ZX and Barcelona only reached series XG (and the next province by registration volume, Valencia, stopped far behind at series HJ). The allowed combinations ZY and ZZ were therefore never issued in any province.

Plates under this system usually consisted solely of black characters on white, though the blue European Union country identifier strip became an option in the 1990s.

Both systems were susceptible to problems with rivalries between regions, that caused trouble for motorists travelling out of their provinces or trying to sell their vehicles second-hand. The second system also suffered when the major languages of Spain were co-officialized, with the renaming of some provinces resulting in mismatches between the name and the code. For instance, the GE code for Gerona became mismatched when that province was renamed Girona after Catalan became co-official—so it was replaced with the GI code (even though it could have been replaced simply by G, which would have fitted both the Catalan and Spanish versions of the province name, but the Catalan nationalists' goal was to state clearly that the name was in Catalan and not in Spanish).^{[citation needed]} OR for Orense was similarly changed into OU for Ourense (Galician nationalists similarly wanted to make the province code unmistakably Galician rather than ambiguously Galician/Spanish, since both Orense and Ourense happen to contain the letters O and R and therefore the change would not have been strictly necessary). There were also unsuccessful movements to have other province codes changed, such as substituting AS (from Asturias) for O (from the name of its capital Oviedo), prompted by city rivalries even internal to provinces (e.g., some people from Gijón, the largest Asturian city, chose to register their vehicles in the province of Girona, with code GI resembling the initials of Gijón, so as to avoid having the province code O on their cars, which stood for the initial of the Asturian capital Oviedo, the archrival of Gijón). The province code LO for La Rioja (which stood for the name of its capital city Logroño) was slated for change into LR the same day that the new system without province codes entered into use, so it never got used.

Old provincial codes

BI-8080-CP

Alicante province registration

Code	Province	Notes
A	Alicante
AB	Albacete	ALB used until 1926, correlative
AL	Almería
AV	Ávila
B	Barcelona
BA	Badajoz
BI	Bilbao (capital of Biscay)
BU	Burgos
C	La Coruña (A Coruña)
CA	Cádiz
CC	Cáceres	CAC used until 1926, correlative
CE	Ceuta (Spanish exclave in North Africa)	from 1922
CO	Córdoba
CR	Ciudad Real
CS	Castellón (Castelló)	CAS used until 1926, correlative
CU	Cuenca
FP	Fernando Po ("Spanish island of Guinea")	1961–1969, one of two replacements for TG
GC	Las Palmas	from 1926, one of two replacements for TE
GE	Girona (Gerona)	replaced by GI in 1992
GI	Gerona / Girona	from 1992, replacement for GE, correlative
GR	Granada
GU	Guadalajara
H	Huelva
HU	Huesca
I	Ifni (former Spanish province in Morocco)	1951–1961, replaced by IF
IB	Islas Baleares / Illes Balears (not only Ibiza)	from 1997, replacement for PM, correlative
IF	Ifni	1961–1969, replacement for I
J	Jaén
L	Lérida (Lleida)
LE	León
LO	Logroño
LR	La Rioja	replacement for LO, but never entered
LU	Lugo
M	Madrid
MA	Málaga
ME	Marruecos Español ("Spanish Morocco")	used for Ceuta and Melilla, replaced by CE and ML in 1922
ML	Melilla (Spanish exclave in North Africa)
MU	Murcia
NA	Navarra	from 1918, replacement for PA, correlative
O	Oviedo (now Asturias)
OR	Orense (Ourense)	replaced by OU in 1998
OU	Orense / Ourense	from 1998, replacement for OR, correlative
P	Palencia
PA	Pamplona	replaced by NA in 1918
PM	Palma de Mallorca	replaced by IB in 1997
PO	Pontevedra
RM	Rio Muni ("Spanish Guinea")	1961–1969, one of two replacements for TG
S	Santander (now Cantabria)
SA	Salamanca
SE	Sevilla
SG	Segovia	SEG used until 1926, correlative
SH	Sahara Occidental ("Spanish Sahara")	the previous code was AOE, which stood for Africa Occidental Española. Discontinued 1976
SO	Soria
SS	San Sebastián / Donostia (capital of Gipuzkoa)
T	Tarragona
TE	Territorio Español ("Spanish Territory")	used for Islas Canarias, replaced by GC and TF in 1926
TE	Teruel	TER used until 1926, correlative
TF	Santa Cruz de Tenerife	from 1926, one of two replacements for TE
TG	Territorio Español de Guinea ("Spanish Guinea")	TEG used until 1926, replaced by FP and RM in 1961
TO	Toledo
V	Valencia
VA	Valladolid
VI	Vitoria (capital of Álava)
Z	Zaragoza
ZA	Zamora

State codes

These keep the old system of letter code plus numbers.

Mossos d'Esquadra police car and plate.

Ertzaintza police car and plate.

Ertzaintza motorcycle plates.

• CME – Cos dels Mossos d'Esquadra (Corps of the Mossos d'Esquadra). The autonomous police force of Catalonia
• DGP – Dirección General de la Policía ("Spanish Police")
• CNP – Cuerpo Nacional de Policía (since 2008) ("Spanish Police")
• E – Ertzaintza (Autonomous police force of the Basque Country)). The E on the plate is in a special Basque font.
• EA – Ejército del Aire ("Spanish Air Force")
• ET – Ejército de Tierra ("Spanish Army")
• FN – Fuerzas Navales / Armada ("Spanish Navy")
• GSH – Gendarmería del Sahara ("Spanish colonial police on Sahara"). Not longer existing
• PGC – Parque de la Guardia Civil ("Spanish civil guard", a militarized police force similar to French "Gendarmerie Française" or Italian "Corpo dei Carabinieri")
• MF – Ministerio de Fomento ("Public Works Ministry") (no correlativity with MOP)
• MMA – Ministerio de Medio Ambiente ("Environment Ministry")
• MOP – Ministerio de Obras Públicas ("Public Works Ministry") (now replaced by MF)
• PME – Parque Móvil del Estado (state owned vehicles)
• PMM – Parque Móvil del Ministerio (state owned vehicles, on a Ministry) (now replaced by PME)

Diplomatic plates

Diplomatic plates are either red, yellow or blue and start with the letters "CD" (red), "CC" (green), "TA" (yellow) or "IO" (blue). The first set of numbers stands for the embassy or organisation and the second for the specific car from an organisation.

Special U.S. Military Plates

The U.S. Military was required to have special Plates up to 1972 when servicemen could use regular civilian plates such as the ones pictured to the upper right.

Colour plates

There are other plates with different background colours for trailers and the so-called "touristic plates", provisory plates that allow foreigners to use a vehicle bought in Spain before registering it in their country. The trailer plates begin with the prefix R signifying remolque, the Spanish word for trailer, caravan or literally "on tow". The tourist plates begin with the prefix P signifying provisional, usually issued to vehicles for export or until the registration process has been completed. They are sometimes seen on manufacturer's prototypes. An additional series exists for historic vehicles with the prefix H followed by four numbers and four letters, making a nine digit plate which can be difficult to fit onto some historic vehicles!

City plates

Diplomatic registration from Spain

Mopeds and microcars with cylinders under 50 cc were not required to have a national plate and town and city administration tax them and issued their own yellow plates.

External Links

• Media related to License plates of Spain at Wikimedia Commons
• Spanish webpage with information and photos of all provinces of Spain