Car license plates in Spain are made up of four figures and three letters, which appear after the blue band with the symbol of the European Union and the E of the country. This alphanumeric code implemented in the year 2000 allows millions of possibilities, but not all letters of the alphabet are used to identify vehicles.
The DGT (General Directorate of Traffic) indicates that there are nine letters that are prohibited on license plates: A, CH, E, I, LL, Ñ, O, Q and U. The five vowels are excluded "to avoid offensive combinations and acronyms that they had some kind of meaning. If they were included, proper names such as Ana, Bea, Eva or Leo could be formed. The aforementioned body points out that they could also "give rise to malicious comments", with words such as anus or pee.
The digraphs LL and CH do not appear on the license plates either. They are not considered letters by the RAE (Royal Spanish Academy) and were excluded from the alphabet. For its part, the Ñ is avoided due to possible confusion with the N. The Q is also outside the system for the same reason, so that mistakes do not occur due to its similarity with the letter O and the number 0.
Until the year 2000, license plates in Spain followed a different alphanumeric code. This included one or two letters to indicate the province to which the vehicle belonged: B for Barcelona, M for Madrid, SE for Seville, MA for Malaga... Then four numbers and one or two letters were added at the end.
The DGT explains that the numbers and letters of a license plate allow municipal police officers and traffic agents "to know the name of the owner of the vehicle, if he has valid insurance, the state of the ITV, fines...". The code also serves to know the age of the vehicle. Tampering with a license plate is punishable by a 6,000-euro fine and the loss of six points from the license.
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