Driving Licence Points In Spain And How The System Works
Expat Tips
Published: 03 July 2019 13:53 CET
Updated: 22 January 2024 13:53 CET
In Spain, you start with 12 points on your driving licence or eight points if you are a new driver and have been driving for less than three years.
If you previously lost all of your points and your licence for 6 or 12 months, you will revert back to starting with 8 points once the 6 or 12-month ban has expired.
Depending on the severity of the offence, you will either receive only a fine or a fine and a loss of points. Once you have no points left, you will lose your licence for either 6 months if it is your first offence or 12 months if it is your second or more.
Any offence can result in a loss of between 2 and 6 points. The most you can lose in any one day is 8 points. If the offence is extremely serious, you may temporarily lose your licence.
Once you have lost all of your points you will need to return your driving licence to the provisional traffic headquarters closest to you and serve your ban.
Having points on your driving licence will also bump up your car insurance premium, so if you want to keep your insurance down, drive carefully and don’t rack up any points.
What can you lose points for?
You can lose points from your licence for many different infractions and offences ranging from driving over the legal alcohol limit (6 points), driving while using a mobile phone (6 points), driving without due care and attention and causing danger to other vehicles (4 points), driving more than 40 km/h over the legal limit (4 points), failure to comply with legal provisions on overtaking (4 points) or driving without a seat belt or safety helmet (3 points).
These are just a few. There are of course many more and some of them may seem completely alien such as:-
If you do get a penalty notice through your door or placed on your windscreen, you need to know whether it is fake or not.
Driving when disqualified
If you have lost your licence and are caught driving again while banned, this is punishable by either three to six months in prison or up to three months of community service.
Can you have more than 12 points on your Spanish driving licence?
Yes. If you do not lose any points after 3 years of driving you gain two points and receive another one point after four years of clean driving. So this would mean you can have a maximum of 15 points on your licence.
How to get your licence back or recover your points
- Partial Loss of Points
If you have a partial loss of points you will be able to recover up to six points by attending a road awareness and reeducation course which lasts around 12 hours in total. You can only attend one of the courses once every two years.
After two years you will recover all of your points unless the loss of points were due to serious offences in which case you will recover all of your points after three years.
- Full Loss of Points
If you have lost all of your points, you will need to sit a road awareness and reeducation course which will last 24 hours in total. This can be attended during your ban period of 6 or 12 months.
You will also need to sit a driving theory test again.
You can find the nearest centre to take your road awareness and reeducation course here https://sede.dgt.gob.es/es/permisos-de-conducir/test-de-examenes/
After your ban has expired, you will recover your licence and have an allocation of 8 points.
How can I check my driving licence points?
You can easily check your driving licence points directly via the DGT website at the following address https://sede.dgt.gob.es/es/permisos-de-conducir/consulta-tus-puntos/index.shtml
You will need to create a password which will be sent to your email address. You will also need to provide other information such as your NIE, driving licence details and the password you were sent.
The following page from the DGT allows you to pay fines, recover your licence, find a centre to take your test after losing your licence and more. https://sede.dgt.gob.es/es/index.shtml
