Owing to the growing number of foreign-registered cars in Almuñécar, many ‘light’ on paperwork, something had to give…
The Almuñécar municipal police recently underwent a training course on how to deal with cars with foreign number plates; i.e., if they are insured and if they have had their periodic road-worthiness check (ITV).
“The object of the course,” explained the Head of the Policía Local, Manuel Ledesma, “it to be able interpret foreign car documents and recognize all kinds of forgeries.”
But it is not just about catching foreign residents with Mickey-Mouse car documents or knowing if the car is properly insured and has undergone up-to-date road-worthiness checks, but is also being able to detect stolen vehicles.
Lieutenant Ledesma also pointed out that Almuñécar now has a high percentage of foreign residents living here on a permanent or semi-permanent basis, continually using foreign cars without importing them.
Editorial comment: thanks to back-water Almuñécar being ‘discovered’ about 10 or 15 years back, the foreign population exploded and what were just a couple of foreign-plated cars seen around town, quickly turned into a whole fleet of them.
The colourful, colloquial, English expression, ‘taking the piss,’ comes to mind.
Finally, although this is a development in Almuñécar, it can be extrapolated to the rest of the Costa Tropical.
(News: Almuñécar, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)
If the Spanish government were not ripping of other Europeans moving to Spain to register their cars here this problem would be solved. Their first registration fee which replaced the import duty that the EEC ruled illegal is excessive with fees of thousands of euros being needed to pay!! Why do they insist on hitting people moving here in the pocket?? Long term they will only stop people moving here and damaging their economy even more!If they remove these heavy registration fees then this would solve the problem.