I'm a real driver now!

December 18, 2007 By: erik Category: Complaining, Spain 520 views

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LToday marks the one year anniversary of me getting my Spanish driver’s license. This means that I no longer have to display that stupid L1 on my forehead the car. In Spain, you see, for the first year that you have your license, you have to display this L sign which means that you also have to go 90 kph on the 120 kph motorway. Do you have any idea how dangerous that is? And all this is still true even when you have been driving for 11 years in other countries and one full year in Spain. Because you’re “inexperienced”. Poppycock!
Learner Plaque

I never once displayed this in my car and never got pulled over. And now I can keep it as a trophy of my insolence.

1What’s funny is that the L doesn’t stand for anything in Spanish. It’s just a European standard which I’ve always assumed meant “Learner”.

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  • http://simonlitton.wordpress.com simon

    So there are no major differences between driving in Spain and other countries to be taken into account? There are several important legal (and cultural) differences between driving in the UK and Belgium (besides from the driving on the left thing) which make me glad that I learnt to drive here, rather than having to adjust and change my habits.

  • http://www.erik-rasmussen.com/ Erik R.

    There are differences, and a short written test highlighting the differences would not be unreasonable. But what’s ridiculous is that they let you drive with a foreign license for a full year, and then you just forget how to drive and have to pay hundreds of euros to matriculate in a driving school and start at the very beginning as if you had never driven in your life.

  • Alaskan Uncle Steve

    I hope you now feel better, having fully confessed to your crime(s) in this worldwide publicly readable forum.

    Hey, do you hear the sound of sirens approaching right this second?

    S.

  • http://www.erik-rasmussen.com/ Erik R.

    Nowhere in this post will you find any evidence that I have actually driven a motor vehicle in Spain in the past 365 days.

  • http://www.hillbillyplease.com/blog/ Jane

    It really is about getting money out of you, isn’t it?

  • http://www.erik-rasmussen.com/ Erik R.

    You got it. That and general laziness on the part of the government to design an easier pathway through the system for immigrants.

  • http://www.thegradys.net Alan G

    The “L” not meaning anything reminded of when I was in Germany and I asked a German what the “WC” stood for over the bathroom. He didn’t know… he just knew that the “WC” meant that there was a bathroom. Todd (you remember Todd don’t ya) said that it stood for “Water Closet”. I don’t know how true any of what I just said actually is, but it is what happened and That sir is my truth.

  • Alaskan Uncle Steve

    In this post, no. In other posts, yes.

    Those sirens are getting a bit closer I think. Time to call that guy Ralph H. that you said you know? But then again, lawyering-up will only hasten the law – a different aspect of the government laziness you referred to… which since you now (oops, and I, too) broadcast publicly, will also quicken their pursuit after the hasty ingestion of mass quantities of sweet pastries…

    Whoops, that didn’t help your case either… Hey, that just sounded like the sirens stopped – right out front – take a look. :-)

  • Frank E Mattimoe

    “You got it. That and general laziness on the part of the government to design an easier pathway through the system for immigrants.”

    Give the Yanks their due, they may not do irony but they still do arrogance. Like nobody else can. ¡Not even the limies, and that´s saying something!

    I´m told that in “The States” georgeW personally writes out the permits in his own fair hand to recognise and welcome and facilittate the immigrant drivers from Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala,Bolivia etc., etc.

    ¡¡¡¡In your dreams!!!!!!!!!!!!

    (The OP is so ignorant that he doesn´t even know if the rules for renewing driving permits are specific to his own state or whether they are “national”.

    ¡Yet still he sounds off against the habits of dumb foreigners!)

    Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.

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