Yes this has taken a while to update. Stuff happened – August is a VERY hot month in Spain, when life slows down and I was already not accomplishing much (or even attempting to, it is REALLY hot in August) when I suddenly sold my house and had to buy another and move within weeks: Things got really hectic and suddenly it was November and the MOT was expiring on 2nd December.

What I had learned in the meantime, which may help anyone looking at buying a right-hand-drive van to convert and use in Spain, is that it isn’t possible to get Spanish plates on a RHD van. What IS possible is to attempt to plate a RHD motor caravan. You have to have owned it at least six months, and it will still have to get through the Spanish test for roadworthiness (matriculación) (which will be very strict, because they really don’t want them here) to even be considered and because by definition it has a big engine, there’s a hefty chunk of duty to pay if it does, but it can be done.

Another thing for any British person with a Spanish driving licence to bear in mind is that even if you are still British by citizenship, Spanish only by residency, you are only allowed to drive a UK vehicle for a month in Spain before it must be plated. Slightly confusingly, the vehicle itself can be in Spain for up to six months before it must be matriculated.

So – the sensible thing to have done was to sell it back to the UK while it still had a few months on its MOT. However if you really think your van is worth a significant amount of trouble and expense, and your dogs love it, you can reclassify it and find an agent who specializes in plating UK vehicles and cross your fingers and go for it. I should have been sensible and this is not yet a success story and never may be, but it is a record of the next few steps.

I’m told the DVLA requirements may be changing soon but right now, at the time of this blog, the requirements to get your van reclassified as a motor caravan are actually not too challenging.

Externally, it must be recognisable immediately as a motor caravan, which effectively means it needs an awning rail either side, and suitable decals of your choice either side which declare it to be a recreation vehicle. This does remove the stealth option – where a van can park pretty much anywhere overnight and pretend to be empty, a motorhome can only park in appropriate places. The van must also be high enough for an adult to stand upright inside, and have at least two windows in the habitation area.

Internally, and as I mentioned this could be changing, it needs to have fixed seating in the habitation area, a fixed table which can be removed or adapted, and fitted sleeping arrangements, which can be converted from the seating / table. There must be at least a single-plate cooking facility built in, or microwave, and there must be storage facilities. Any gas supply must be correctly secured. Photographs showing all of the above, and the registration number, and the VIN or chassis number, must be sent to the DVLA along with the request for reclassification. They can, be warned, reclassify it as, say, a van with windows (and that decision is final) and / or they can insist it be presented at a suitable testing facility for inspection. This is all on the Gov.UK website – https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/converting-a-vehicle-into-a-motor-caravan/converting-a-vehicle-into-a-motor-caravan – and presumably the link stays the same if/when the requirements are revamped.

I took the van on a camping excursion during that first legal month and remained thrilled with it (we’d also had a successful trip from UK to ferry to Santander to home in the south of Spain) so I started on the conversion. It had to be stripped of some hoisting equipment (long story), the floor was sound but very scuffed, the previous owner had stripped out the ceiling insulation but the sides and doors had been professionally done and were still good. But tick tock – MOT running out 2nd December. The agent specializing in UK cars said he could get the van green-plated for up to six weeks, which would keep it legal long enough to reach the required six months of ownership (4th January) but it would have to be converted, reclassified, and the new V5 received, by then. DVLA was almost certain to demand an inspection seeing the MOT was imminent anyway, and as they frown on vehicles being taken out of the country ‘unofficially’ there could be no pleading that it was in Spain and an inspection would be seriously inconvenient.

As matters stand, the interior is largely completed to the “siesta van” minimums . The exterior requirements are not. The decision was, if it must be sold, to keep it in stealth mode until everything else had been done. In the UK, the only advantage to being reclassified is to be allowed to drive slightly faster on the motorway than is legal in a commercial van. Stealth mode is an asset to many, silly to lose it for what was still a very basic conversion.

Anyway, those are all fairly unique situations arising from owner stupidity so the only other thing this blog warns about is insurance. I got Spanish insurance from a broker specialising in English-speaking clients living in Spain but they are only the brokers. My advice would now be to get UK insurance for that first six months, which is what I had originally done with my car when I brought that to Spain. The van is on its way back to the UK with long-suffering friends to get its MOT sorted, but blotted its copybook very much indeed by dying in France. Untangling the situation with Spanish insurers and French garages is beyond frustration. Don’t do it. I’d also say in passing that if my brokers had only said (or even known) it wasn’t possible to register a RHD commercial vehicle in Spain this blog would never have been written and I wouldn’t have a dead van in France. This has been a series of stupid blunders from the beginning, though.

I can only say it seemed a good idea at the time. I drive a RHD car (legally) so am probably marginally less lethal in a RHD van than I would be in a LHD. I have a very young granddaughter in the UK so the notion of escaping the excessive summer heat every year by meandering across Europe with bag, baggage, dogs, and my own accommodation, to call on scattered family, was fatally tempting. Meh.

There’s no law that says you have to make your own mistakes, you can learn instead from others, so there may well be more blogs on the nature of this rather focused ignorance for any other unenlightened out there.