Parking Entrance

Have you ever con­sidered how there a great deal of places that you are pro­hib­ited to stop or park in Spain? It is fairly ob­vi­ous that you are pre­ven­ted from stop­ping on curves, and slopes with re­duced vis­ib­il­ity, close to and in­side tun­nels, and in un­der­passes. Also on level cross­ings, and ped­es­trian cross­ings, but also on cyc­list cross­ings… Then there are lanes or parts of lanes re­served ex­clus­ively for cer­tain users, and cer­tainly park­ing at in­ter­sec­tions or close to them, as it can make turn­ing dif­fi­cult for other vehicles. You def­in­itely can­not stop (al­though this should be ob­vi­ous!) or rail­road or tram tracks or close enough to them that move­ment could be ob­struc­ted or in places where it will block the view of signs for other users. Be­cause of this fact, cara­vans and lor­ries must be care­ful be­cause of the large di­men­sions of their vehicles are block­ing signs, then they may need to seek other park­ing spaces. Of course, you can­not stop or park on high­ways or mo­tor­ways, ex­cept in the spe­cial areas al­loc­ated for these pur­poses. Un­for­tu­nately, some­times people are driv­ing, re­ceive a tele­phone call and think the best thing to do is park on the hard shoulder to an­swer the call as it is not al­lowed to talk on the tele­phone while driv­ing and it will be safer. Well… the hard shoulder is only to be used for emer­gency reas­ons. A phone call, no mat­ter how im­port­ant, is not a reason to stop on a high­way! People must leave at the first exit or look for a rest area where they can use the tele­phone safely. People do not real­ise that every year there are car ac­ci­dents be­cause of a driver be­ing dis­trac­ted and they drift onto the hard shoulder and hit other vehicles that were pulled up there. It is vi­tal that the use of the hard shoulder is only for vehicle emer­gen­cies. Park­ing is also for­bid­den in re­served lanes for pub­lic trans­port or bi­cycles, and in areas des­ig­nated for the ex­clus­ive use of pub­lic trans­port. Also in the marked areas for the ex­clus­ive use of dis­abled people and where there are ped­es­tri­ans steps. Parking Regulatory Restrictions It is pro­hib­ited to park in the places above whereby stop­ping is pro­hib­ited, as well as in the places au­thor­ised by the town hall with time lim­it­a­tion park­ing without pla­cing the ticket that au­thor­ises it in the win­dow, or that the ticket is vis­ible but the vehicle is in ex­cess over the max­imum time al­lowed! Also, it is pro­hib­ited in all areas for load­ing and load­ing, ex­cept when they spe­cify oth­er­wise. Clearly, it is for­bid­den to park on pave­ments, prom­en­ades and other areas in­ten­ded for ped­es­tri­ans (al­though many people for­get this!). No Parking or “Vado” Signs Some people buy Keep Clear or No Park­ing signs at hard­ware stores and put them in front of their drives/​gar­ages. These signs are not valid if they are used as a Keep Clear sign or to pro­hibit park­ing on the pub­lic road, since the Town Hall reg­u­lates and has au­thor­ity for park­ing reg­u­la­tions in the zone. Re­mem­ber that when you pay for a proper “Vado” or Keep Clear sign, you are pay­ing to have the right of way of vehicles to your gar­age, not the park­ing space on a pub­lic road. Some people think that they can park their vehicle at the door of their gar­age, where it has a “Vado” sign in or­der to be able to ac­cess the drive. Only when they are fined they real­ise that the Keep Clear sign gives them the right of free ac­cess to the gar­age, and it is not meant to stop other people park­ing on the pub­lic road in front of their ac­cess, but al­low them to do it them­selves. This is not the pur­pose of a Vado. Simply put: a Vado means it can­not be blocked, someone can­not park there.