VehiclesDB

Spain license plate: Provincial

Retired 1971 to 2000. Standard plates for car, van, truck, bus, and motorcycle, issued by Dirección General de Tráfico (DGT). One of 19 Spain license plates.

Spain license plate, Provincial (1971 to 2000), sample LU-3761-HQ
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Format, years and the law

Format
LL-9999-LL, for example LU-3761-HQ (L is any letter, 9 any digit)

The leading letters name the issuing province, M is Madrid, B is Barcelona, SE is Seville, and the trailing letters are just the series counter that kept the numbers from running out.

The format above follows the issuing rules: a registration that fits it is one this series could have issued.

Years issued
1971 to 2000. No longer issued.
Vehicle class
Standard: the default series issued to private road vehicles. Issued for car, van, truck, bus, and motorcycle.
Colours
Characters #000000 Background #FFFFFF
Size
520 × 110 mm · every country's size
  • Spain license plate, Provincial 340×220 mm (1971 to 2000)

    Provincial 340×220 mm

    standard · 340 × 220 mm

  • Spain license plate, Provincial 340×110 mm (1971 to 2000)

    Provincial 340×110 mm

    standard · 340 × 110 mm

  • Spain license plate, Provincial 220×160 mm (1971 to 2000)

    Provincial 220×160 mm

    standard · 220 × 160 mm

About this plate
THE PROVINCIAL SUFFIX-LETTERS SYSTEM, 1971-2000, Spain's only region-decodable modern series, REDATED in the 2026-08-02 pass. Start: Decreto 2046/1971 published BOE 07-09-1971, in force at 30 días naturales = 7 OCTOBER 1971 (its own disposición final; the commonly repeated "October 1971" is thereby confirmed and dated to the day). End for NEW registrations: Orden de 15-09-2000, in force 17-09-2000 (disposición final única + BOE Análisis). The former release of this entry carried period 1999-2000 (the RD 2822/1998 instrument window) with the honest caveat that no 1971 primary was secured; the primary is now secured and the period is corrected. Plates already issued remain valid indefinitely and are re-issued on request; RGV Art. 27.2 lets an owner swap a provincial plate for a national one on a change of province.
How numbers are issued
Within a province the four digits cycle 0000-9999, then the trailing letter group advances one step in a series the statute itself orders: "comienza por la letra A y termina por las letras ZZ", SINGLE letters first (M-1234-A), TWO letters after Z was exhausted (M-1234-AB), which is why the suffix count is an intra-series progression and not a separate series. Each province advanced at its own registration rate, so the same suffix letter maps to different years in different provinces, suffix decoding is per-province or nothing. The Orden of 15-09-2000's preamble confirms the exhaustion dynamic: the system "está próximo a agotarse en las provincias de Madrid y Barcelona".
Separators
The GUIÓN IS STATUTORY in this era: the dimensions table of art. 232 as rewritten by Decreto 2046/1971 carries an explicit "Longitud del guión" row (as did its 1907, 1918, 1926 and 1934 predecessors for the numeric era). The 1999 Anexo XVIII re-enactment prescribes group spacing in mm without naming the glyph; the hyphen in the pattern is the statutory printed separator, not a convention.

Legal basis and sources

  1. Decreto 2046/1971, de 13 de agosto (BOE 214, 07-09-1971): art. 231.I = the suffix-letters format verbatim; art. 230.II colours; art. 232 dimensions + guión; art. 233 the 1971 contraseña list (GE, OR, PM, SH);... https://www.boe.es/buscar/doc.php?id=BOE-A-1971-1149
  2. Corrección de errores of Decreto 2046/1971 (BOE 275, 17-11-1971), READ AND CHECKED: fixes arts. 146/165/208-209/24x only; the plate articles stand as published. https://www.boe.es/buscar/doc.php?id=BOE-A-1971-1472
  3. ORIGINAL RD 2822/1998 text, Anexo XVIII I.A.a): province contraseña + 4 digits + 1-2 letters (A..ZZ) re-enacted; BOE Análisis block: 'Fecha de entrada en vigor: 26/07/1999' https://www.boe.es/buscar/doc.php?id=BOE-A-1999-1826
  4. the Orden that ENDED new issuance in this format: disposición final única 'entrará en vigor el día siguiente al de su publicación' (BOE 223, 16-09-2000) -> in force 17-09-2000, stated by BOE's own Análisis; plus both... https://www.boe.es/buscar/doc.php?id=BOE-A-2000-16805
  5. Anexo XVIII II.A: the 52 province contraseñas of the 1998 list; Cuadro 1 'con siglas de provincia' rows https://www.boe.es/buscar/pdf/1999/BOE-A-1999-1826-consolidado.pdf

Before and after

Spain license plate, Provincial numeric (1900 to 1971) It replaced Provincial numeric 1900 to 1971 Spain license plate, National (documented since 2000) Replaced by National documented since 2000

This plate in your app

The series id is es-provincial. The API returns its format, validation, colours and designs with the rest of Spain's series:

curl -s https://vehiclesdb.com/api/v1/plates/es \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $VEHICLESDB_API_KEY" \
  | jq '.series[] | select(.id == "es-provincial")'
Check plate formats in your app

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