Got a letter through from the Spanish revenue generation department today.

The letter is all in Spanish (naturally) so I cant read any of it, the only thing I can make head or tail of is a pic of the back of the car and that I was apparently doing 110kph in a 100kph zone.

should I rip up and ignore or request an English translation?

Was the car on English plates or was it a hire car?

hire car

The fine will be taken from the debit/credit card you used to hire the car.
There will also be an admin charge from the car hire place.
You won’t be asked if this is ok. They’ll just take it.

bollops

I picked up a ticket back in 2010 in a hire car

Ignored it, the fine went up a couple of times, but i kept ignoring it

No money was ever taken from my account – winner!! 🙂

The fine will be taken from the debit/credit card you used to hire the car.

Just say you’ve lost your credit card and they’ll issue you a new one with a new number / exp date, so no-one who currently has any details will be able to take money from you.

Puts you back in the driving seat, so to speak.

I’d probably ignore it, and I can’t see asking for a translation will get very far.

If you do want to pay, http://www.dgt.es is the place to do it.

and what do we think of foreigners who come over here, break our laws and clear off back to their own country, ignoring the consequences

We’re secretly jealous that they get away with stuff and happy to take the chance to do it ourselves…

The fine will be taken from the debit/credit card you used to hire the car.
There will also be an admin charge from the car hire place.
You won’t be asked if this is ok. They’ll just take it.

Or alternatively, nothing will happen at all.

That was the case for me anyway.

They don’t bother chasing the foreign cars in the UK.
But the dvla helpfully gives out our details to anyone who wants them.

I was just unlucky then

Do you plan on going back to Spain ? The risk for ignoring an offence in the UK would be you get fined and points on your licence then a warrent for non payment then when you pass through border controls you get arrested on the warrent and held in custody unless you pay the fine in full in cash.

The hire car company charged me an admin fee for giving my details to the Spanish plod. Plod sent me a ticket which I ignored and heard nothing more.

A bit different in Switzerland where a letter was delivered to my house which my wife signed fir. I was then told I wouldn’t be allowed back in the country until it was paid plus they would up the charge for admiin etc. I think it was about 400 euros before I started negotiating, cheque lost in post etc, and ended up just paying the original fine

Rental car company will have charged you for passing on your details. I believe the Spanish Authorities can convict you in your absence in the same way the UK can and can take the fine etc from your credit card via the rental company.

I’ve been dinged a few times by the Swiss, it’s better to take your own car rather than rent from a speeding ticket point of view 😕

The hire company will deduct it from your card – it will have been in the small print when you rented. They will charge you an admin charge as well.

I know it happened to me …

Do you plan on going back to Spain ? The risk for ignoring an offence in the UK would be you get fined and points on your licence then a warrent for non payment then when you pass through border controls you get arrested on the warrent and held in custody unless you pay the fine in full in cash.

Except that most EU border controls just wave through EU passports without even checking it……