February 5, 2018
Hello Graham
Further to yet another excellent and informative article in the Costa Blanca News this week, could you please provide me with a little more detail regarding the registration of a caravan in Spain.
I want to buy a caravan here but as you stated the prices are high and many models belong to the history books. I have seen an English, CRIS registered, three-year-old caravan for sale in the Costa Blanca but it hasn’t been registered in Spain. Assuming it has a Certificate of Conformity, could you please give me some idea of how much it would cost for the ITV and for your services to register it? I enquired through the N332 Facebook about the legalities of towing a UK registered caravan with a Spanish registered car from the place of purchase to my local ITV station but didn’t receive a definitive reply.
Costs and time scales would be a tremendous help.
Regards
Tony Merrick
Dear Tony
Thank you for your email. If the caravan has an EU Certificate of Conformity (CoC), then re-registration is straightforward. If not, it can be inspected under the “change of residence” regime, meaning that the owner registered it with CriS before he obtained his FIRST padrón. In these circumstances an engineer’s report (ficha reducida) is produced in lieu of the CoC.
This principle applies to all vehicles, whether powered or not.
There are no taxes associated with the costs of re-registering caravans, so the costs are ITV inspection, gas and electric inspection/certification, engineer’s report if required, plus fees. I will advise you of this separately. The entire process takes about a week before you are given the red number plate for the caravan.
UK caravans and trailers are not formally registered in the UK. The CriS registration is a private registration via the Caravan Club, but is accepted by the ITV station and Tráfico as adequate proof of ownership and vehicle details. Therefore, a UK caravan can only be towed by a UK registered car, not a Spanish one.
I hope that this helps.
Regards
Graham Shelton
