You Drive Me Crazy

One of the questions we get asked a lot is “what’s it like driving in Spain?” As with many things, there’s good and bad. On the good side, the roads are generally excellent, especially the motorways (aka freeways for those in the US), and Spanish drivers’ lane discipline is outstanding. You know those times when you’re driving up I-5 and you’re stuck behind some idiot sitting in the left lane at 50mph because he’s got just as much right to that lane as you do, goddamn it? Doesn’t happen here. You get in the left lane to overtake, you overtake, and get back over to the right. With good reason. Usually because some dude in a Porsche SUV (or sometimes, amusingly, a white van) is about to come screaming past at over 100mph, and you don’t want to be in his way. 

Truck drivers here seem to have some sort of death wish. They tailgate all the time, and not just a little bit. You’ll often see three trucks nose to tail, barreling along at over 60mph, with barely a car length between them. God help you if you’re coming up behind them and one decides to overtake the others. He’ll just swing out into your lane with no warning. It gets your attention, that’s for sure.

Off the motorways things are pretty calm. In the older cities and towns the roads can be very narrow – sometimes you can barely fit one car down them, let alone two. There’s a reason most people drive small cars here. You’ll see the occasional idiot driving at crazy speeds, but for the most part it’s pretty chill.

But the real fun part of driving in Spain is getting your license. If you come here from overseas, you can drive on an international permit for six months, but then you have to get a Spanish license. For many people, that’s a simple process. If you’re an EU citizen, or from South America, or much of Asia, or North Africa, or just about everywhere except the USA, you can pay a fee and exchange your license for a Spanish one. For us Americans, it’s not that easy. You have to go through the whole process of getting a Spanish license. It’s complicated, and it’s expensive. 

Plan on spending about 500 Euros and taking two months to get your license. You could probably do it a bit quicker and cheaper if you pushed it, but that’s a good guideline. It’s a three-step process. 

Step one is getting the Certificado Medical. This, as I’m sure you guessed, is a certification that you’re medically fit to drive. To get one, you go to a local testing center and undergo a series of physical and neurological tests. They’re mostly pretty easy, but there’s one fun test that’s like an old-school video game. On the screen there are two sets of white lines, each with a red dot between them. The lines weave from side to side, and you have to move a dial to keep the red dot between them. The tricky part is that you have to do both at the same time, one with each hand, and they’re moving in different directions all the time. When you get it wrong (and you will, a lot), the machine makes a loud buzzing sound. I was sure I’d failed because it buzzed almost constantly, but they gave me a certificate anyway. 

Once you’ve got your certificado, you have to sign up with a driving school for the theory and practical tests. This is where the expense comes in. You can only take the practical test through a driving school, and they aren’t cheap. Their fees cover a lot, including signing you up for the theoretical and practical tests. I looked into doing some of it on my own to save money, but quickly realized that the Byzantine bureaucracy here would make that close to impossible, so I bit the bullet and coughed up for a school in Valencia. 

First up is the theoretical test. It’s thirty questions of multiple choice, with three options for each question. You can get up to four wrong overall and still pass. And you can take it in English. Sounds easy, right? Not so fast. First, the questions are often more than a little obscure. Things like “A bus and a horse-drawn cart approach a single lane bridge from opposite directions. The bus is going uphill, but it has a layby. The cart reaches the bridge first. Who must yield?” And some of the English translations aren’t that great either, especially in the answers. You might see something like:

a)       And it is.

b)      It isn’t.

c)       Isn’t it?

The best way to pass is to hammer through a bunch of practice tests until you’re consistently getting less than four wrong. Fortunately there are plenty of online practice test resources out there. Kim and I took advantage of them, and we both managed to pass first time. 

From there it’s on to the practical test. Or more specifically, lessons and then the test. The driving school told me I’d need at least three lessons. This was a surprise – I’ve been driving for close to 40 years, and thanks to the theory test, I knew the Spanish road rules inside out. But then I had my first lesson and I realized why. The lessons aren’t to teach you how to drive, they’re to teach you how to pass the test. All the little quirks the examiners look for – how to behave at crosswalks, making sure you turn your head enough for them to see that you’re using your mirrors, and stopping in the right place at stop signs (it’s harder than you think). And then there are the roundabouts. Valencia has many huge roundabouts that are seven or more lanes wide. With no actual lane markings. And traffic lights in the middle of them. The rules are complicated but it's more or less a cross between ballroom dancing and a game of chicken.

The last lesson is an exam simulation in the same area where you’ll take your test. As you drive, the instructor calls out all the things you’re doing wrong. As if that’s not enough, occasionally they’ll have you pull over and review all your bad habits just to emphasize what you need to focus on in the exam. Kim came home from hers swearing and demanding gin.

The test itself is in Spanish, but fortunately limited to a small set of words. Basically turn right, turn left, go straight, and oh shit don’t hit that cyclist. It’s nerve-wracking, and the worst bit is that you don’t get your results right away. You get to spend two days replaying all the mistakes you know you made in your head, before you finally get a WhatsApp from the driving school telling you that you passed. Which fortunately we both did, again.

Spain being Spain, there is an easier way to get your license. There’s an exclusive driving school in San Christobal, where the rich and famous go. For an eye-watering fee, you get to do a four-day intensive class, after which you will have passed both the theory and practical test. Everyone knows that you don’t actually take any tests, and it’s just a boondoggle for the wealthy to avoid all that hassle.

But we did it the legitimate way, and we’re now both licensed to drive in Spain. We have temporary permits, and apparently our actual licenses should arrive in the mail in two or three months. Unfortunately, we’re moving in a month and a half, so our next adventure in Spanish bureaucracy will probably involve mail forwarding. Wish us luck!