Vehicle registration plates of Spain
Spanish vehicle license plates
Vehicle registration plates are the mandatory number plates used to display the registration mark of a vehicle, and have existed in Spain since 1900. Most motor vehicles which are used on public roads are required by law to display them. The government agency responsible for the registration and numbering of vehicles is the Directorate General of Traffic.
Current system
Spain has finished using the L-series, the format of which was 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 consonants B, C, D, F, G, H, J, K, L, M, N, P, R, S, T, V, W, X, Y and Z are used for a total of 80 million possible registrations in the system.
L see Colour plates. It is not used in private vehicles.
This format, introduced on 18 September 2000, is used nationwide, so there is no way of knowing where the vehicle was registered. The "counter" 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.
In 2025 the three-letter counter reached the end of the M-series, and began the N-series, starting NBB. At the current rate of approximately five series per decade, the system will be exhausted around 2040.
“Vehicle registration plates of Spain” enters the record as spanish vehicle license plates. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Vehicle, registration and plates can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Vehicle registration plates of Spain” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.