Life in Spain - Buying a motorcycle

Our plan was always to buy motorcycles and then to travel around Spain by bike. As such I thought it may be helpful to capture the steps that we went through to buy, insure and get the relevant road certification documentation in place to do this, assuming that buying a car is pretty much the same.

Two important notes:

1) You must have a NIE. You can’t do anything here without a NIE. I have put this first as there is no point looking if you don’t have one.

2) If you only have an Australian drivers licence (or non european) it will also be challenging. Before leaving Australia we bought International Drivers Licences from the RAC and this fact seemed to be instrumental to us being able to get insurance locally. So for the sake of a few $ I would recommend investing in one of these before you leave Australia/other non european county.

The search

Use media such as motos.net (bikes), coches.net (cars) and also the local marketplace ‘wallapop’. Andrew bought his direct from the seller, using motos.net whereas I felt a bit more secure buying through a shop, but everything goes through motos.net, so you just trawl through till you find what you want.

So you have found what you want….now what?

Once your price and other conditions (eg. if the seller will pay for a service or who pays for the ‘change of ownership’) have been negotiated, we ‘reserved’ the bikes by paying a small deposit. In our case for good second hand trail bikes we paid a couple of hundred euros so not a big percentage of the purchase price.

BTW in Spain it is unusual to be able to take the bike for a test ride. Yes it sucks but it’s due to the bike not being insured apparently. So if you know a mechanic, it would be great to take them along but we didn’t so we had to work on feel and trust…time will tell!

Before you can pick up the bike, you need three key things in place:

1) Insurance.

To organise the insurance you need to get from the seller:

• Registration plate number (matricula).

• First registration date of the bike (1 matriculacion).

• VIN number (bastidor).

We had some issues with our search for insurance due to our Australian licenses and the fact that within 6 months, as Australians we are obligated to take the Spanish driving lessons and obtain a local driving licence (check out my separate blog on this). In the end, we went with AMV. They were great and accepted our Australian licence and international driving licence. Very responsive and comparative in price with Australian bike insurance - although may be worth noting they spoke little English. Some companies we got quotes from were double what we would have paid for the equivalent bikes so don’t think it is going to be any cheaper here.

One last thing on insurance. We insured fully comprehensive (todo riesgo). However the first policy you get you are only insured Third Party (tercero). Once you have picked up the bike, then AMV organise for someone to come and assess the bike and take photos of it along with your purchase paperwork and then they will send you an updated contract, Fully Comp. We didn’t really understand why this is, but don’t be alarmed if you are only insured for Third Party when you first receive the policy.

2) Change of name/ownership

You will need to provide to the seller (or have available if you go together to the government office (gestionario):

• Copy of your NIE certificate. You don’t really get a ‘NIE certificate’ - we used our TIE application form and also our Padron (refer “TIE application” blog). Basically you need to prove your legitimacy as a resident and provide all the necessary address and ID details they require - the Padron should get you over the line but as we also had our TIE applications in we provided these as well.

• Copy of your passport (photo page)

3) Money

Of course the money must be in their account before you can ride away. If your money in a local Spanish bank, you can do an immediate transfer (small fee of 95 cents to do this) and the transfer is indeed, immediate. I just mention this because if you are needing to do any international transfer of funds, you will need to factor the timing delay with regards to picking up the bike.

Picking up the bike

Nothing specific here to do other than check the bike over and ensure you obtain the paperwork from the seller.

You should ride away with:

1. Fiche Technica - Bike Certificate Shows the whole bike ownership, technical details and when the next road tax is due

2. Provisional Certificate for you to ride the bike - This is provisional, pending the paperwork trail for your final “Permiso de Circulacion”. Note: while on the provisional permit you are not able to take the bike out of Spain

3. Direccion General de Trafico (DGT) road tax sticker - For cars this must be displayed on the windscreen but for bikes most people will not put them on the bike, but rather just keep them safe at home. Recommend you take them with you if you go travelling though, ready for any police inspection.

4. Sales Contract - only if purchased via a shop. Spanish government mandates a minimum 12 months guarantee on any vehicles purchased in a shop so this document will indicate the date of purchase and all vehicle details as well as the conditions of the guarantee