How to export your adventure vehicle from Spain!

Описание: Over the past three years I developed the idea to combine two things: communicating geosciences in an easily accessible way while traveling to show the beauty of understanding nature and what benefits it can have for you and traveling to remote places. To be able to do the second part of overland travels I needed a reliable 4x4 vehicle that was easy to fix and would me take anywhere. After two years of learning, searching for a vehicle and saving money, I finally found this Toyota Land Cruiser in Spain - a compromise, but I’m happy to have found it! Here, I talk about the process of exporting a car from Spain with temporary number plates for anyone who stumbles upon this topic or is just interested in listening to the story. So here is what you need:

1. Knowledge about cars or a person who does
2. Language skills - in Spain you’ll need to make phone calls, make sure to consider that
3. Accessibility - you need another car to travel to the place where the car is and a person coming with you
4. Money - the owner might agree on a instant payment transfer, but cash is also quite common to pay for a car. In the city I found a bank where I could withdraw 1000 euros at a time on a cash machine.
5. Gestoria - an intermediate between you and the authorities, you pay them to make the paperwork.
6. Buying the car - you’ll need your passport, a contract (preferable in both languages you’ll need)
7. ITV - technical check up of the car, if it’s not valid anymore you or the owner need to pass it before deregistering it
8. Deregistration - the gestoría will deregister the car, afterwards you’ll not be able to drive it anymore
9. Placas verdes - the temporary green number plates. To get them, you’ll need a NIE
10. NIE - a thing to consider in the beginning! Number of identification for foreigners
11. Print the number plates - not every place makes green numberplates, so make sure to ask upfront
12. Insurance - there are short term insurances, you’ll need to put a spanish address and phone number when you buy one
13. Technical preparation - depending on how long you drive service your car upfront to avoid issues

That was my experience, there might be easier and faster ways! If you experienced this process differently let us know in the comments! Furthermore this of course offers no legal advice, it’s a personal experience report, so recheck all the information on exporting an car from Spain on the DGT website!

The next step will be the importing process in Austria, before I can actually start thinking about where to overland to with the little Toyota.

During that time I stayed at Ruralco Coliving, an amazing place within the beautiful region of Castellón. Oscar helped me tremendously with my project and made everything more enjoyable! Check it out here:

https://ruralco.live