Cars as social outcasts

I'm sorry but I have to admit to enjoying Joyas sobre ruedas on the Discovery Channel - Wheeler dealers in its original. That interest explains why I asked after the hire car of a couple of friends visiting from the UK. The car had a late letter L registration - well under a year old - but it didn't have one of the emision badges or stickers on the windscreen. I mentioned this and, not surprisingly, our friends were completely in the dark about the badges. I explained. It's basically an emission thing. The idea is that electric cars, hybrids, newer petrol and diesel cars can get stickers whereas older petrol and diesel cars can't. The environmentally cleaner your motor and the fewer restrictions. The older and dirtier your car the sooner it will be forced off the road.

I remembered the badges conversation when we were in Altea town centre. "Ah look, there'll be a badge on this car", I said, but there wasn't. I walked down a row of at least 50 parked cars before I got to one with a sticker. I was truly surprised. My car has one and I just presumed that it was in the majority. In fact I recently had a conversation with a Spanish chap who was really sad that the new legislation meant that he was going to have to replace his much loved, nearly 500,000 kilometre, but still going strong, SEAT Cordoba for something newer. Hypothetically, from 1st January 2023, all towns with a population in excess of 50,000 have a low emissions zone (ZBE) in place. That's now a date that has passed. In practice only Madrid, Barcelona, Pontevedra and Zaragoza have complied with their legal obligations. A handful of other towns are nearly there and will implement this year but lots of places, Murcia Region and the Valencian Community for instance, have absolutely nothing planned.

The stickers are the basis for cars and vans entering these low emission zones. Bear in mind that there are lots of exceptions, lots of ifs, buts and maybes. The system gives a 0 sticker to the non polluting cars - electric vehicles and the like. Hybrids and gas propelled cars get an ECO sticker. Petrol engined cars after the beginning of 2006 and diesels built after September 2015 get a C sticker. Petrol cars from 2001 and diesels from 2006 get a B sticker. Older than that and you don't get a sticker. As I said lots of exceptions and lots of technical definitions. Look somewhere official if you need real detail.

There are 149 towns that have over 50,000 people in Spain. If this legislation had actually been implemented on time and you owned a nicely turned out, 2005, 2.7 litre diesel Jag S type you wouldn't be able to drive into them. Locally that would keep you out of Alcoy, Petrer, Orihuela, Torrevieja, San Vicente, Benidorm or even Molina de Segura never mind the obviously larger places like Alicante, Elche or Murcia.

The plans are in the hands of the local town halls so the what, where and how will vary from place to place. In Barcelona for instance the restrictions cover nearly all of the city but in Madrid it's just the very small area inside the M30 ring road. The idea is to use cameras to identify, and later fine, cars that enter the areas they shouldn't. Fines in Madrid and Barcelona are at about 200€ with discounts for early payment. These two cities give a clue to how other places will behave. The 0 cars enter and leave at will and street park if they can find somewhere. The B and C cars can enter but have to use designated car parks and even the ECO cars can only street park for a maximum of 2 hours. Residents currently get the right to enter the restricted areas with any old car but that right will be phased out over time. It's pretty easy to see the thinking behind this. If you're poor, with an old banger then you get the chop first. The better off, with a newer motor, get a reprieve for their combustion engines for a while but, until people abandon fossil fuel, the restrictions will bite harder and harder. 2030 is the first target date for real controls and by 2050 combustion engines will be a thing of the past. Indeed in the EU the plan is that new combustion engine vehicles will not be sold after 2035. 

It's probably true too that the idea of private car ownership is already a bit passé. Different ways of getting about urban areas for individuals and rethought schemes of planning and coordinating public and group transport for longer trips are on the way. Unless the sixth extinction event gets here first. Until then it's not difficult to get the stickers. You go to the Post Office with your Permiso de Circulacion for the vehicle in question and your ID for the owner of said vehicle - something like your TIE, DNI or, I suppose for non residents with cars parked here, their passport and NIE.

The impetus for this blog was my surprise at realising that so few cars have the sticker. It is not intended as a guide to the legislation. For good information go to a reputable source, like the DGT website or, for something in English, maybe the N332 Facebook page.

Yearning for the past

I forget why, I forget what we'd been doing, I really do forget a lot of things nowadays, but we were with friends and and now it was time for lunch. The nearest place on the route back that might have restaurants was Polop so we drove into the town. We followed the signs for the ayuntamiento, the town hall. The road changed from tarmac to paving which is a sure sign that we were in the heart of the oldest part of the town, the part to expect restaurants. We passed the typical town centre buildings, the tourist office or the town hall or the parish church - again I forget. It's not that we were able to choose our route. We were funneled and shepherded, inevitably, by no entry signs and compulsory turn signs along the one way circuit through the old town. And suddenly the road became a street about two metres wide.

It happens from time to time. You follow the SatNav without realising it's set to shortest route or you simply get funnelled into the old part of a town and suddenly you're on streets that were not designed for cars and vans but for donkeys and handcarts. Now my car is loaded with sensors. It pings if you're close at the back, it beeps if you're close at the front, it chirps if you're close on the left and it tweets if you're close on the right. Or something like that. It's an all singing car. On this occasion in Polop the car was tweeting and chirping. It's bad enough having to negotiate very narrow streets, with very solid walls scuffed and marked with the paintwork of tens of previous cars, but with the Sociedad Española de Automóviles de Turismo (SEAT) choir at its most vocal it was a particularly nerve-wracking piece of driving.

The other place you see scuffed concrete walls, decorated with the paintwork from any number of Mercedes, Toyotas, Renaults and the rest, is in the underground car parks that abound in Spain. I often wonder why the builders of Spanish car parks put bollards that are low enough to be invisible from the car as you get close. I wonder why the distribution of the parking spaces and the route to them is so labyrinthine; snaking between the very solid supporting columns. Then, of course, there are those ramps that are so steep that you can only see the ceiling through your windscreen. Even when you think you're in the clear, near the exit, the angle of approach to the ticket machine calls for some close order manoeuvring with the very solid, read car bending, ironwork put there specifically to protect the ticket machine from errant vehicles.

In fact I have this theory about car park design. As I said in a blog a few weeks ago most Spaniards now live in biggish towns and cities. The majority though remain proud of their rural roots. They may never go to the countryside but they all claim some wide spot in the road in Teruel or Castilla la Mancha as their spiritual home. They say that village life is in their blood, in their very DNA. My theory is that they subconsciously yearn for are those twisting and turning streets. So what do they do? The builders, planners and architects among them, who live in the city but whose veins course with bucolic blood, design the car parks to mimic those narrow streets with their impossible turns, very solid walls and intricate routes so as to recreate a part of their rural heritage in the city.

Boundary changes

We were in a traffic jam this last weekend. A proper traffic jam. A traffic jam that kept stopping and starting and which we took half an hour to clear. I felt quite sorry for the bloke in the Porsche Cayenne Coupé. He was originally alongside as we put on the hazard warning lights and slowed to join the tailback. He was so pressed for time though that he had to dodge from lane to lane. It worked. He was at least 100 metres in front of us when the traffic started to move again as the RM19 motorway, the one we were on, merged into the A30 that skirts Murcia city. 

I seriously don't remember the last time I was in a similar traffic jam here in Spain. We don't have traffic in the countryside. We really don't. Sometimes, where the Monóvar road meets the Yecla road in Pinoso, there's a police officer to make sure that you don't have problems turning left across traffic but that's only around the time the industrial estate kicks out. On the main roads in and out of Pinoso it's quite likely that you'll only see one or two cars, or none, in every couple of kilometres.

The traffic jam was important only in a lateral thinking sort of way. There was so many cars because, for the first weekend in ages, most of the Covid travel restrictions had gone. A few regions tried to maintain the border controls but the courts were having none of it. We've still got a midnight curfew in Valencia which might have been important if we'd been making our way home three or four hours later but we weren't so it wasn't. 

We didn't go far. About 100km from Culebrón but only 3.3km over the border from our home province. We were near Lo Pagán with the salt pans, the mud baths, the flamingos and the Mar Menor. Hundreds, nay thousands, of people had the same idea. Hence our difficulty in parking at the Port in las Salinas and the traffic jam later. 

When in Rome as the saying goes.

The open road

Driving in Spain is like driving anywhere. Well no, it's not like driving in Mumbai or Sana'a, but it is like driving in places that have reasonably organised traffic. Most people keep to most of the rules most of the time. By that I mean it's like driving in Dublin or Munich or Mirfield. The cities are busy, towns are busy but Spain has lots of space for not many people and hundreds of Spanish roads are dead quiet. Where we live the roads are very quiet. It's a joy.

Last Wednesday were in Elche and I left an obvious space so a car, joining from a slip road, could pop into the main traffic flow. The driver waved in acknowledgement. I was surprised; I wondered if he were foreign, like me. Spaniards do not, generally, acknowledge any assistance on the road. Flash someone in for instance and there is, usually, no answering flash, no quick flip of the hazard lights nor any little wave. Actually, if, as a pedestrian, you hold the door for someone entering or leaving a building there's unlikely to be any acknowledgement either but that's another post.

Most Britons complain about Spanish driving. Mind you most Spaniards I have ever talked to complain about Spanish driving too just as all Britons complain about British driving. Saudis don't complain about other Saudi drivers except after the bump.

Signalling is something that Spanish drivers don't seem to be keen on. Again I have seen facetious Facebook videos from Arkansas State Troopers demonstrating what turn indicators are used for and how they operate. Maybe it's not a uniquely Spanish problem. This lack of signalling is particularly problematic in roundabouts. 

Spanish roundabouts have a different system to the one in use in the UK.  Basically you have to be in the outside lane to leave the roundabout (just to be clear about this I mean the lane that has would involve driving the longest distance around the roundabout). The outside lane has priority over the inside lanes. Not that it's the recommended system but this means that even in the biggest city with lots of traffic and, say, a five lane roundabout your "safest" bet is to take the outside lane and to go round and round in the same lane till you reach your exit. It's not the method that the traffic authorities suggest but the "approved" version at times includes a lane change which is sometimes impossible to achieve. If you are in one of the inside lanes and there is a car outside of you then you have to give way. It is not the best system and, effectively, it makes all but the outside lane redundant. As you may expect, in reality, people use all the lanes and do what they can not to bump into each other. The rules also only require drivers to signal their intention to leave the roundabout or to change lane which is effectively the same thing. No turn signal means the vehicle intends to continue circling the roundabout. So, if you're waiting to enter a roundabout and there is no turn signal from the approaching vehicle you should wait. As signalling is considered to be a waste of time by nearly everybody it's an absolute lottery as to whether a car will keep coming or turn off.

If signalling is only for the woolly minded and weak then so, for some, is leaving any space between your car and the car in front. Most of the time the traffic just goes pootling along without any problem but if something is going too slowly the line of vehicles behind will drive as though they were in one of those Secret Service Convoys you see in the films. A metre or two between vehicles at most. This is usually a spectator sport for me because I leave plenty of space between the front of my car and the back of the vehicle I'm following. That's a distance for me to control. Not so for the driver behind me who often seems quite convinced that by closing the gap to the back of my car to some 30cms or so I will speed up. I often wonder where the driver behind thinks I am going to go. Boxed in by a vehicle in front and a not to be crossed white line to the left there is nowhere for me to go. I really don't understand their reasoning unless they are fans of doggy style and/or anal sex and find the rear of my car in some way exciting. 

Another quite interesting and problematic thing are the speed limit signs. Not the idea of speed limits but the signs for those limits. Spain is littered with signs. The general rule is to give way to traffic to your right but normally, where a minor road meets a major road, the signs override that generic rule and precedence is with the main road. There is though, usually, a sign to limit the speed as you pass the junction. On a typical 90km/h two lane road the speed limit across the junction is 60km/h. The majority of traffic doesn't slow to 60 but most people slacken off a little. I had a Guardia Civil car tailing me as I got to one of these signs. Discretion being the better part of valour I slowed to keep to the speed limit and the Guardia car almost rammed me from behind. It's the same sort of thing when approaching a roundabout. Presuming that we're on a normal two lane, 90km/h road there will be a sign maybe 200 metres out from the roundabout to say 70km/h and then 50 metres out another to say 40 km/h. It's a favourite trick of the Guardia Civil traffic cars to put their speed traps just past the sign because any average driver will be slowing for the approaching hazard but they will still be doing more than the speed limit as they pass the radar.

Just two last things. Although they are dying out now Spain used to have lots of junctions with a sort of horseshoe shape turn. Rather than stopping in the middle of the road to make a cross traffic turn you would drive into the horseshoe and then stop to check whether it was safe to proceed. Most have been replaced by roundabouts, though some still exist on quieter roads.  

This is from a driving test sample. The correct answer is the orange route.

The other thing is that in the past if someone was wandering around the road, going alternatively quickly and then slowly I used to presume they were drunk or stoned. Nowadays I just presume that they have an incredibly important WhatsApp message to type. And isn't that something you recognise too?

Driving along in my automobile

I went to see some old pals in Valencia the other day. They are Britons here in Spain for just a few days. It's Fallas time in Valencia when lots and lots of communities and neighbourhoods construct papier maché type figures (I have no idea what material they actually use) up to maybe 20 metres high (a guess) and then set fire to them.

Valencia is the third largest city in Spain and yesterday it was chockablock with people in town for the fiesta. It's quite likely that a lot of the regular inhabitants of Valencia have fled to avoid the disruption that Fallas causes but lots more were dressed up in "traditional" dress. As an aside have you ever wondered why traditional clothes are fixed at some point in the past? Who decided that the quintessential traditional costume in an area was worn in 1876 or 1923? Why not 1976 or 1723? And what if we chose 2016 as the perfect year for a new version of traditional costume? What and how would you choose? Why fix a style anyway?

I travelled to Valencia on the train. It seemed sensible when the train fare is 9.50€ for the 140kms especially as the railway station is right in the heart of the city. Like the country bumpkin that I am nowadays I marvelled at the throng of people on the pavements, the size of the crowd to watch, or rather hear, the bang bang bang of the mascletá outside the Town Hall and the general coming and going of people either involved, in some way, in the Fallas or not.

It was pretty manic getting on to the train to leave Valencia. There were so many people heading for the automatic ticket gates that security people were having to control the flow of ticket waving humanity. When I got back to my parked car at the Elda/Petrer railway station (free parking in the forecourt) the difference in pace was obvious. The side by side towns of Elda and Petrer have a combined population of around 90,000, which is a town sized town, but, even then, there was nothing much going on around the station.

As I drove the 25kms home I used main beam on the car more often than dipped. There was no traffic. There very seldom is. I can't remember when I was last in a traffic jam worthy of the name. Sometimes there is a brief interruption to the traffic flow but not very often. I drive 60kms to work and it takes me between 44 and 47 minutes without fail. Of course, we live in the back of beyond. In any of the bigger Spanish cities and towns, and down along the coast, the traffic is just traffic and there are jams and bumps and traffic lights and speed traps and nobody can find a parking place and all the rest.

Here though it's just like one of those adverts on the telly where the happy driver thrills to the luxury of his or her gleaming vehicle on the open road.

After all these years I still think it's one of the brilliant things about living in rural Spain.

Road signs

There are a lot of road signs in Spain. Most of them are pretty standard and give orders, warnings or advice in the way that road signs do all across the world. Some of them though, particularly speed restriction signs can be really difficult to work out.

In general there are fixed speed limits on roads which do not need to be signed. They are the default. They vary for different types of vehicles so I'll limit myself to cars. On motorways the speed limit is 120k/h, on roads with a wide hard shoulder it's 100, on standard two lane roads it's 90 and in towns it's 50k/h. All of these speed limits can be amended by the usual round sign with a red border and the black number on a white background. I didn't realise till I was checking details for this post that there is also a general minimum speed limit which is half the maximum. So you could be fined for going faster than 120k/h or slower than 60k/h on a motorway.

There is also an interesting exception to the 90k/h rule. Where there are no signs on a normal two way road you can exceed the speed limit by 20k/h during an overtaking manoeuvre.

Speed limit signs and no overtaking signs are everywhere on Spanish roads. I often wonder if someone powerful has a brother in law who makes road signs because, at times, the proliferation of them seems so excessive. It's very normal for instance to count down from the open road as you approach a town or a hazard such as a roundabout. 80k/h, twenty metres, 70k/h, twenty metres, 40k/h.

One of the key places where there are no overtaking signs and speed restrictions on what would normally be considered "the open road" is around a junction. These signs are usually backed up by changing the central road markings to single continuous white lines. These signs can be odd. Often there will, for instance, be a 60k/h sign a couple of hundred metres before a junction but, after the junction there will be nothing to say that the restriction has been lifted. Sometimes there are signs to mark the end of the no overtaking rule which I always take as showing that you can speed up again but, often, you seem to have to presume that once the hazard has been passed you are back to the general speed limit. In the case of a T junction this can mean that there are different speed limits on the opposite sides of the road because the hazard is only important on the side of the road where the junction is.

Another interseting one is where the sign is more descriptive. For instance there is an 80k/h limit on the way through a wide spot in the road outside Pinoso called Casas Ibañez. A few metres inside the 80 zone is a second sign which says 50k/h in the crossing. A few hundred metres later there is a second 80k/h sign. So I know where the 50k/h restrction ends but I have no idea where it starts.

And then, there are the completely contradictory signs. In the photo at the top of this entry the 20k/h sign is obvious but, on the road, the markings say 30k/h. Actually I understand that the cycle way marked in red is actually at variance with the rules for bikes which says that they should keep as close to the edge of the road as possible and means that cyclists using the track could actually be fined.

Hey, ho!