Car parking in Barcelona

[Pepino]

I'm trying to decide if it's wise to take my car with me when I move to Barcelona next month. On the negative side, there seem to be loads of reasons not to take it..

1. My apartment doesn't have a dedicated space
2. Hassle of getting it there (as opposed to a cheap walk-on walk-off flight)
3. Re-registration? (Don't know much about this, but I imagine I'll at least have to have the headlights adjusted for driving on the opposite side of the road?)
4. Traffic - Not sure if I can mentally cope with driving in BCN. I've seen it as a passenger/pedestrian enough times to put me off for life!
5. Public transport is good
6. The list goes on...

But on the plus side...

1. I LOVE MY LITTLE CAR ;)

As many people in BCN live in flats (presumably many without alloted spaces), where do they put their cars? There's plenty of info on the web about public carparks, but they are more suited to short stays, and I'd want to buy/rent my own space near to my flat. Is this the norm? And what kind of prices do they go for?

Any advice would be appreciated :)

[Marina]

Hola Pepino,

In Madrid people usually rent, buy or park in the street with a district permit, so I guess it would be more or less the same in the Barcelona. For renting depending on the area you can expect to pay about 120Euros/month, buying depends very much on the area but in the city it can be about 30.000 Euros, and obviously the permit is the cheapest option but you have to be "empadronado" (register your address in the council) in the area for at least 6 months.

I would suggest flying there to begin with, and once your are there you can find out all the options depending on the area that you live. Then in your next visit you can bring it over as having a car gives you the option to travel to small villages and remote places, which usually are the best.

Other option to consider is if you don't need the car on a daily basis you can rent a pepe car or a smart with advertising whenever you want to travel.

[Pepino]

Hi Marina,

Thanks for this. You're absolutely right in that I don't want to miss out on all the smaller, less accessable villages and towns (especially as I've never really seen this side of Spain) so I figured having my car there for whenever I want to head out of the city would be a good solution, but it all sounds so expensive! :eek: My apartment is right in the city centre, and I definitely can't afford to buy my own space at anything like those kind of prices. Besides, it'd probably be silly anyway, as I want to stay as flexible as possible in the early days so I can move around if somewhere new in Spain catches my eye. Renting a space is more practical if I do go down this route.

I love the Pepe idea, and saw that on Ben's blog the other day, but didn't put two and two together. My current car is a Smart Roadster and I absolutely love it, so this kind of option sounds right up my street!! (pardon the pun! :p ). I've just checked the prices out, and I can rent a regular Smart car for €9 a day, which is just incredible :)

The icing on the cake is that I was talking to a friend earlier tonight, and it turns out I've got the option of leaving my Smart in her garage which is luckily near my parents house. It's secure and handy for when I visit home (home is still England for the moment!), so I'm probably going to take up her offer. I don't want to leave it to collect dust for too long (and I certainly couldn't bare to sell it :'() but a few months left home-alone without me will give me time to settle and decide what's best.

Gracias por todo!