Driving Licence in Spain: Autoescuela, DGT Test, Six-Month Deadline

Getting a driving licence in Spain from scratch means three things: a medical report, a theory test and a road test. In Seville that runs to 950 to 1,600 euros, and the DGT exam fee of 94.05 euros covers two attempts. Whether you need any of it depends on one document. Your passport.

Getting a driving licence in Spain: exchange it or start from zero

Plenty of people in Andalusia drive for years without ever sitting a Spanish test. Whether you have to sit one comes down to a single question. Which country issued your licence? The answer sets your deadline, your fee and whether you ever walk into a driving school at all.

Start with the bad news. It catches more readers than you would expect. Licences issued in the United States, Canada, Australia and South Africa cannot be exchanged here, because none of those countries appears on the DGT list of agreement states.

What you get instead is a countdown. A non-EU licence stays valid for six months from the day you take up normal residence in Spain, and the DGT says so in plain words. After that it is not a licence any more. It is a souvenir.

Now the good news, and it is the part the forums keep getting wrong. Since 16 March 2023 Spain and the United Kingdom recognise each other’s licences, so a British or Northern Irish document can be swapped without any theory or road test. New Zealand joined on 2 June 2023. The exchange procedure has its own guide, and this article picks up where that one ends.

One trap sits in the small print. It catches long-term residents. If you obtained your home-country licence while you were already legally resident in Spain, the exchange is refused, agreement or no agreement. The rule targets licence tourism, and honest applicants get caught with it.

Irish readers can relax entirely. Ireland is in the EU, so the licence stays valid for as long as it is in force, and any exchange is voluntary. The one exception is a licence with no expiry date or an unusually long validity, which has to be renewed in Spain two years after you settle here. That is a renewal, not an exam.

Starting from zero takes three things. The minimum age for the Permiso B is 18, you need to reside in Spain, and no court may have banned you from driving. Your residency card proves the second point. EU students have to show at least six months of continuous residence.

Nothing moves without an N.I.E. Nummer. It appears on every application the school files for you and on the medical report itself. Get it first, because everything else waits for it.

The padron certificate from your Empadronamiento at the Ayuntamiento is the second document the school will ask for. It shows which province you live in. That sounds like paperwork, but it decides which test centre you end up sitting in.

From medical report to road test: how the process runs

The Spanish licence is built from four stages in a fixed order: doctor, application, theory, road test. Your driving school handles the paperwork and books the slots. Your job is mostly to turn up. Money leaves your account at three of those four stages, and getting the order wrong mainly costs you time.

Budget for this. The medical report is valid for 90 days from the day it is issued, and your exam application has to reach the authority inside that window. The running costs are the exam fee and the lessons, and every school sets its own lesson price.

The entry requirements are short: 18 years of age, residence in Spain, a valid medical report. The DGT asks for nothing else. Pass the road test and you are handed a provisional licence that works inside Spain only. The card itself arrives by post after roughly six weeks.

How to get your Spanish driving licence

1. Get the medical report
   Examination at a Centro de Reconocimiento de Conductores, valid for 90 days afterwards.
2. Choose a driving school
   Ask for the price list and the training contract before you sign anything.
3. File the exam application and pay the fee
   Tasa 2.1 at 94.05 euros, good for two exam attempts.
4. Sit the theory test
   Pick your language beforehand; the mark is usually published the same day.
5. Take your lessons
   The DGT recommends a minimum lesson length of 45 minutes.
6. Sit the road test in live traffic
   Then a provisional licence, with the card following after roughly six weeks.

What the driving school does for you

The school files the application for the tests, books your slots and pays the fee through the official payment form (Spanish: Modelo 790). In its Manual de buenas prácticas the DGT requires every school to show its tariffs together with what each one includes, and to issue a training contract (Spanish: Contrato de enseñanza). Ask for both in writing. The tariff sheet and the contract belong with your enrolment.

• Medical report from a Centro de Reconocimiento de Conductores, no older than 90 days
• Valid identity document or passport plus your N.I.E. Nummer
• Proof of payment for the exam fee of 94.05 euros

You can file the application yourself and skip the school’s admin charge. Doing it in person means an appointment at the provincial traffic office, which means the whole cita previa circus. Online works too, with Clave, an electronic ID or a digital certificate. Either way you track every deadline yourself.

The road test on open roads

The practical exam happens in ordinary traffic, not on a closed course. The DGT publishes 15 assessment blocks covering everything from the pre-drive checks through joining traffic, junctions, lane changes and overtaking to stopping and parking. The examiner records every error you make during the test in a report. You see it afterwards.

A pass counts for two years. So if you clear the theory and then fail the road test twice, you keep the theory result, pay a fresh fee and drive out again. That fee is another 94.05 euros, and most of the cost still sits in the lessons you take between attempts.

The theory test: questions, error limit and language

The theory test is the part newcomers dread most, and it is also the part the regulation spells out most precisely. The number of questions, the error limit and the time allowed are all fixed in the Reglamento General de Conductores. The language is your choice.

Annex VI of the Reglamento General de Conductores sets the common question paper at no fewer than 30 and no more than 50 questions. You fail if your errors exceed 10 per cent of the questions asked. One minute is allowed per question. A 30-question paper therefore means 30 minutes and at most 3 errors.

Spanish is not the only exam language. The official DGT test service serves the questions in English, German, French, Spanish, Catalan, Basque and Galician, and the Spanish motoring press lists the same choice for the real exam. For an English speaker the biggest imagined obstacle disappears. Special permits stay Spanish-only, alongside the co-official languages.

The fee buys you two exam sittings, in the DGT’s own words. The mark usually appears the same day. Fail both and you pay again and file a fresh application. Three attempts exist only for drivers recovering a licence lost to the points system.

Keep driving after the six months are up and you are driving without a valid licence. What the Guardia Civil charges at a roadside check is set out in our guide to Spanish traffic fines. Nobody reminds you.

What a driving school in Andalusia costs

Now the arithmetic. School prices in Spain are unregulated while the state fees are identical everywhere, which is exactly why the totals scatter so widely. We quote only published price lists and dated consumer sources. The columns are Item, Amount, As of and Source, so you can see what each number refers to.

Cost breakdown for a Spanish driving licence in Andalusia

The state side is quickly told. Tasa 2.1 costs 94.05 euros as of 2026 and sits in the DGT fee catalogue at that price. Anyone who qualifies for an exchange instead pays Tasa 2.3 at 28.87 euros. On the official fee alone the two routes are 65.18 euros apart.

Before the application comes the doctor. The consumer site practica-psicotecnico.es quotes a Medical report Seville at 25 to 45 euros and a Medical report Málaga at 30 to 50 euros, in each case for the examination at a Centro de Reconocimiento de Conductores without the state fee. Eyesight, coordination, reaction and hearing are checked, and it rarely takes half an hour.

Lessons are where geography bites. Autoescuela Echeverría in Málaga publishes its list: a Single lesson Málaga at 30 euros, a Ten-lesson pack Málaga at 265 euros, a thirty-lesson pack at 690 euros. For Seville, the provider Dribo quoted on 30 April 2026 a Single lesson Seville at 38 to 57 euros for 45 minutes at a traditional school. Across ten lessons that gap is 270 euros.

Dribo puts a Full licence Seville at 950 to 1,600 euros all in. What lands you at one end or the other is almost entirely the number of lessons you need. In its Manual de buenas prácticas the DGT recommends a minimum lesson length of 45 minutes. Shorter units ruin every comparison.

A licence tends to be followed by a car, and a car brings its own paperwork. Whether you are importing a car to Spain or buying one locally changes the tax, the plates and the date of your first ITV inspection. Each of those has its own deadline.

Then there is the environmental sticker, which goes on the windscreen and puts your car into an emissions category. Few drivers know it exists. It is checked in the low-emission zones of the larger cities, and it is missing from a remarkable number of foreign-plated cars in Andalusia.

The theory test can be taken in English. The rest cannot. The instructor explains in Spanish, the doctor at the Centro de Reconocimiento de Conductores asks in Spanish, and the examiner beside you says “en la siguiente rotonda, la segunda salida”. Translating that in your head costs exactly the seconds in which the examiner is writing, and a few weeks of targeted speaking practice before the first lesson does more for your pass rate than three extra laps of the block.

Frequently Asked Questions

A driving licence is one line on a much longer list. Everyone who moves to Andalusia trips over the same sequence of registration, health cover, tax number and school places, and each of those has its own deadline. The order matters. We wrote the whole sequence down once, with worked budgets for three sample households.

Verdict

Lessons set the bill, from 30 euros a unit in Málaga to 57 euros in Seville, which lands a Seville licence at 950 to 1,600 euros. The state fee barely registers next to that. Sit the theory in English. Keep working on the spoken Spanish anyway, because that is where the hours come down.

People treat the six-month window as advice and lose the licence they already have. Drivers from the United States, Canada, Australia and South Africa hold nothing valid once it runs out, and the road back runs through a driving school, while British holders have been able to swap since 16 March 2023. Check the DGT country list first. The rest of the move is mapped out in our relocation guides.