Caravan rules in Spain

Map data: © OpenStreetMap contributors. State-subsidised road network (Sweden): © Trafikverket (NVDB), NetInfo WMS. Country polygons: Natural Earth. Routing via FOSSGIS (OSRM/Valhalla). Guidance only, not legal advice.

Towing a caravan in Spain

Spanish traffic law barely uses the word caravana. In the whole Reglamento General de Circulación it appears exactly once, and not as a rule: it is the gloss in brackets on road sign S-113, the sign that points to a field where you may camp with a remolque-vivienda. What the law regulates instead is the combination. Any car pulling any trailer sits in one column of one table, and the trailer’s weight does not move it.

The table in article 48

Article 48 sets the limits outside built-up areas as a three-by-two table. The middle column is the one you are in:

• Cars, motorcycles, motorhomes up to 3,500 kg, pick-ups: 120 on autopista and autovía, 90 on an ordinary (convencional) road.
• Lorries, vans, motorhomes over 3,500 kg, articulated vehicles, cars with a trailer, and everything else: 90 on autopista and autovía, 80 on a conventional road.
• Buses: 100 and 90.

There is no weight line in that column. A 500 kg tent trailer and a two-tonne twin-axle caravan get the same two numbers, and a car that is under its own towing limit gets no credit for it. That makes Spain one of the simplest countries in Europe to plan: 90 and 80, and nothing else to check.

Note the difference the Spanish words make. An autocaravana is a motorhome, and up to 3,500 kg it drives the car figures, 120 and 90. A caravana is a trailer, and hitching one moves the whole combination into the middle column. Same word family, different row.

One uplift in the article does not reach you: on a conventional road whose two directions are physically separated, the road authority may raise the limit to 100, but only for cars, motorcycles and motorhomes up to 3,500 kg. A combination stays at 80 there.

In town

Article 50 sets urban limits by the shape of the street, for every vehicle alike:

• 20 km/h where carriageway and pavement share one surface.
• 30 km/h on a street with a single lane in each direction.
• 50 km/h on a street with two or more lanes in each direction.
• 80 km/h on an autopista or autovía that runs through a built-up area, and 50 on a travesía, a main road passing through a town.

There is a floor as well as a ceiling

Article 49 forbids driving under 60 km/h on an autopista or autovía, and under half the generic figure for your category on any other road — so 40 where your ceiling is 80. If your combination cannot hold the minimum and there is a risk of being run into from behind, the article tells you to drive with the hazard lights on.

What else changes when a caravan is behind you

• Lane use. Outside built-up areas, on a carriageway with three or more lanes in your direction, a combination longer than 7 metres normally keeps to the rightmost lane, and may use the next one along on the conditions in article 31. The same sentence covers lorries over 3,500 kg (article 32).
• Distance. A combination longer than 10 metres keeps at least 50 metres to the vehicle in front, so that a faster driver can overtake in one move. The rule is switched off in town, where overtaking is banned, where there is more than one lane your way, and in traffic too dense to overtake in (article 54).
• Closed lanes. High-occupancy VAO lanes are open to motorcycles, cars and dual-purpose vehicles, and expressly closed to cars with a trailer (article 35). Contraflow lanes, the ones opened against the normal direction on holiday weekends, are closed to them too, and carry their own 80 ceiling and 60 floor (article 41).
• Who backs up. Where two vehicles meet and one has to reverse, article 62 ranks the types. A combination comes second, behind only oversized special transports — ahead of buses, lorries and cars. Drop the trailer to 750 kg or less and you fall to fourth, which is still ahead of all three.

No disc, and no overtaking bonus

Spain does not ask a caravan to carry a speed disc. The rear speed-limit plate, sign V-4 of annex XI to the vehicle regulation, is obligatory for drivers subject to a limit for personal reasons, for special vehicles and special combinations, and for vehicles running under a special-transport authorisation. A car with an ordinary caravan is none of those (article 52.2).

The old rule that let a car exceed the limit by 20 km/h while overtaking on a conventional road was repealed with effect from 21 March 2022. Article 51 now reads simply (Derogado). It never applied to a combination in any case.

A change is coming, but not to your row

Article 48 is amended with effect from 1 October 2026. The amendment touches only letter b), the paragraph about school transport and buses carrying standing passengers. The table above is word for word the same in the new version, which was checked rather than assumed: both versions were read out of the same data set and compared.

Campeur plans Spain at 80

The planner carries one speed per country and it must never sit above the law. For Spain that is 80, the conventional-road figure. Motorway legs come out 10 km/h pessimistic, which is the right direction to be wrong in.

For contrast, see France in detail, where the same question turns on a weight line at 3.5 tonnes, and the Netherlands in detail and Germany in detail, where a faster limit exists but has to be earned.

Source: Reglamento General de Circulación, Real Decreto 1428/2003, articles 32, 35, 41, 45 to 52, 54 and 62, in the version in force. Read from the publisher’s own open data, the BOE open data API for consolidated legislation, which returns every version of every article: each one here was picked by its date of entry into force as at 11 August 2026, and versions not yet in force were set aside. The speed table has been in force since 29 January 2019. Checked 11 August 2026.

The figures above come from the official text itself and are dated, but Campeur is not a legal source and rules change. Check the signs and the regulation in force before you travel. Found an error? Send it to kontakt@campeur.eu and the page will be corrected.