# Spain license plate: Provincial

> The Spain provincial license plate: format LL-9999-LL, for example LU-3761-HQ, 1971 to 2000, car, van, truck, bus, and motorcycle.

Page: https://vehiclesdb.com/license-plates/spain/provincial · Markdown version of the HTML page, which is canonical. Site map: https://vehiclesdb.com/llms.txt · Terms of use: https://vehiclesdb.com/legal/terms

Part of [Spain license plates](https://vehiclesdb.com/license-plates/spain) (19 registration series).

![Spain license plate, Provincial (1971 to 2000)](https://vehiclesdb.com/plates/es/es-provincial/spain-license-plate-provincial.svg)

| Fact | Value |
|---|---|
| Format | `LL-9999-LL` (L is any letter, 9 any digit) |
| Years | 1971–2000 |
| Class | standard |
| Issued for | car, van, truck, bus, motorcycle |
| Plate size | 520 × 110 mm |
| Other sizes | 340 × 220 mm: ordinaria alta con siglas de provincia; 340 × 110 mm: ordinaria larga delantera con siglas de provincia; 220 × 160 mm: motocicletas ordinaria con siglas de provincia |
| Colours | background blanco #FFFFFF; characters #000000 |
| Checking a registration | The format above follows the issuing rules: a registration that fits it is one this series could have issued. |
| Series id | `es-provincial` (https://vehiclesdb.com/license-plates/spain/provincial) |

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.

Sources:

- [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); disposición final = in force 30 días naturales after publication -> 07-10-1971; DT 1.ª old numeric plates keep validity.](https://www.boe.es/buscar/doc.php?id=BOE-A-1971-1149)
- [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)
- [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)
- [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 disposiciones transitorias (voluntary re-plating; mandatory new dimensions on replacement).](https://www.boe.es/buscar/doc.php?id=BOE-A-2000-16805)
- [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)

## 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.

## Before and after

| Relation | Series | Years |
|---|---|---|
| It replaced | [Provincial numeric](https://vehiclesdb.com/license-plates/spain/provincial-numeric) | 1900 to 1971 |
| Replaced by | [National](https://vehiclesdb.com/license-plates/spain/national-2000) | documented since 2000 |

## Other standard plates here

- [National](https://vehiclesdb.com/license-plates/spain/national-2000) (documented since 2000)
- [Provincial numeric](https://vehiclesdb.com/license-plates/spain/provincial-numeric) (1900 to 1971)

## Use it

- Plate image (SVG): https://vehiclesdb.com/plates/es/es-provincial.svg
- Make it with your own text: https://vehiclesdb.com/license-plate-generator/spain?series=es-provincial
- API: `GET https://vehiclesdb.com/api/v1/plates/es` returns this series as the entry with `"id": "es-provincial"` (https://vehiclesdb.com/api)

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Open data, CC BY 4.0: reuse it with a visible credit to VehiclesDB and a link (https://vehiclesdb.com/legal/attribution). Plate images show sample serials and are not open data (https://vehiclesdb.com/legal/image-license). Dataset commit db0ec0a: https://github.com/vehiclesdb/vehiclesdb