Hello,

We're US citizens who are here for 2 years and we've applied for Spanish residency. We understand it could take months to get the residence card.

Meanwhile, we'd like to buy a car.

But the Trafico Department says that Spain has no agreement with the US, so that after 3 months, we can't legally drive here unless we have a Spanish driver's license. An International License apparently is no longer good enough And we can't get a Spanish license until we have our residence cards.

We wonder if anyone knows anything about this, one way or the other?

Thanks, Dana

Quite strange I would say. Are you sure you can't use your US driver license? It makes no sense to me... You mau inform yourself in your embassy and in the Dirección General de Tráfico www.dgt.es

Anyway, if you want to get a spanish driver license you have to attend to an "autoescuela". After that you will have to make an theoric exam and if you pass it you have to do a practical exam (which consists of driving around for 20 minutes).

Hope you are lucky in this matter...

Dana: I have been told by foreign residents that the international driver's license is valid only for a year.

Autoescuela is highly recommendable, but, according to law, you don't really need. However, there are few possibilities that you know the many tricks in the written or / and driving/parking exams if you don't.

Hi Fernando and Ignacio,

Thanks for you replies. We've looked at the Trafico website... and an International driver's license won't do the trick either.

I forgot to say that several Mapfre agents have told us we can't even get insurance without a driver's license.

We have a couple of connections, but we're not hopeful that they'll turn up anything. Too many of the people who have the info first hand have confirmed that we must get a Spanish driver's license.

Anyone other US citizens who've been in the same fix? apparently the law just changed last year.

Dana