Laurence Dollimore
GETTING your ITV for your car in Spain has always proven a bit of a nightmare.
The bookings have to be made often months in advance and on the day of the motor checkup you can be left waiting around for hours.
But what happens if you have an appointment during the nationwide lockdown and your car is about to be out of date?
It’s no small issue given that the Road Safety Law punishes those without an up to date ITV (Spain’s version of an MOT) with fines of €200.
The Royal Decree 463/2020, issued over the coronavirus lockdown on March 14, refers to the suspension of administrative deadlines.
It reads: “Terms are suspended and deadlines for processing procedures of public sector entities are interrupted.
“Terms will be resumed at the moment the royal decree ceases to be effective.”
It means for the 15 days of lockdown, police will not be sanctioning cars for driving with an expired ITV.
It comes after Andalucia, Balearic Islands and the Basque Country ordered their centres to be shut down for the entire lockdown period, while other regions have opted to continue with their schedule or operate with reduced hours.
Asturias has also suspended its tests for two weeks while Catalunya has closed its ITV points in Argentona, Granollers and Igualada.
The rest of its stations will only be operating between 7am and 2pm.
However, controversially, ITV stations in the Valencian Community, Aragon and the Canary Islands and Madrid are remaining open.
The differing decisions between the regions has caused much confusion among drivers.
AECA-ITV, which oversees the MOTs nationally, has asked the Ministry of Health to ‘immediately’ suspend its activity nationwide in a bid to reduce coronavirus contagion.
The association said the risk of contagion in the stations is ‘very high’ due to the number of people who access them.
