Methodology

Sources

The figures on these pages come from the registration microdata of the Dirección General de Tráfico (DGT), the Spanish traffic authority: Microdatos de matriculaciones de vehículos (mensual) — one ZIP per month holding one fixed-width record per registration, 714 characters each, published about six weeks after the month ends (July 2026's file appeared on 15 August 2026). Reuse is allowed under Spain's public-sector information rules (Ley 37/2007 and RD 1495/2011, as listed on datos.gob.es) with the attribution "Origen de los datos: Dirección General de Tráfico (DGT)". The file behind this export was read on 2026-09-12, the latest month is 2026-07, and the site shows the latest 36 months.

Spain's official monthly new-car figure is published by ANFAC, the manufacturers' association, in press releases together with Faconauto and Ganvam. There is no machine-readable series behind those releases, so ANFAC is quoted here for comparison only and no gate in the pipeline reads it. The DGT itself publishes an annual statistics workbook (Matriculaciones – Tablas estadísticas) with the monthly Turismos totals, new cars and used imports together, once a year has closed; the site's 2024 and 2025 months match it to within 0.1 % (1,131,151 against 1,131,794 for 2024 and 1,304,177 against 1,304,292 for 2025).

What is counted

The worked figures in this section and in the ones below are for July 2026, the first month published under this pipeline; they are there as examples of the rules and do not move with the extract date shown above.

A registration counts when a passenger car — DGT vehicle type 40 (turismo) — receives a definitive Spanish plate in the month: COD_CLASE_MAT = 0 with CLAVE_TRAMITE 1 (an ordinary registration) or B (a temporary plate being made definitive).

Temporary plates are excluded. A car put on a temporary plate appears in the file twice: once in the month it is temporarily plated (class 7, trámite 9) and again, months later, when the plate is made definitive (class 0, trámite B). Counting both would count the same car twice, so only the definitive event is counted — which is also the moment the car really enters Spanish traffic. In July 2026 the file held 119,748 passenger-car records and 118,217 survived the filter. A re-registration (CLAVE_TRAMITE 5: a Spanish car returning to the register with a new plate, 839 rows in the 55 loaded months, nearly all first registered between 1987 and 2000) is not an import and is excluded with the temporary plates.

What type 40 leaves out. The DGT files some passenger cars under other type codes: 25 todo terreno (off-road approval, M1G — Land Rover, the Toyota Land Cruiser, the Jeep Wrangler, the Mercedes G, and many large premium SUVs whose variants carry the G approval, such as the BMW X5, the Volvo XC90, the Audi Q7 and the Porsche Cayenne), 7A autocaravana (motorhomes) and 0G vehículo mixto adaptable (van-derived people carriers, only partly M1). Over the 36 published months type 25 holds 96,384 definitive plates (67,331 new, 29,053 used imports — 2.6 % of what the site counts, 2.1 % of its new cars and 7.0 % of its used imports) and nearly all of Land Rover; motorhomes hold 32,735 and the mixed-use type 131,966, of which 74,277 are M1. None of them is counted on this site today, which is why the Land Rover, Jeep and Porsche brand pages run low. The 2026-09-08 data audit recorded type 25 as an open decision rather than a filter setting, because the raw table holds type 40 only and adding a type means re-reading every month's file.

Measured against ANFAC's official new-car figure, the counts here run +0.8 % in July 2026 (102,735 against 101,949), +0.5 % in June (129,079 against 128,426), +0.6 % in May (112,534 against 111,894), +0.1 % in December 2025 (103,144 against 103,012) and +0.2 % over 2025 (1,150,942 against 1,148,650). The two scopes differ in opposite directions: ANFAC counts the off-road type 25 that this site leaves out, and leaves out the van-derived M1 people carriers (Berlingo, Rifter, Caddy, Multivan, Tourneo, Proace, Kangoo, Combo …) that this site counts because the register calls them passenger cars. In July 2026 those nameplates were 2,740 new cars and type 25 was 1,696; the site's figure less the first plus the second is 101,691, within 0.3 % of ANFAC. Brand by brand the same month, Toyota, Kia, Seat, Dacia, Hyundai and Renault agree with ANFAC to within 2 %, Volkswagen (+643) and Peugeot (+368) run high by their van-derived models, and BMW (−269) and Mercedes-Benz (−341) run low by their type-25 SUVs. Electrified new cars (BEV and PHEV together) were 25,369 against ANFAC's 25,229 in July 2026 and 222,864 against 225,617 over 2025.

A month is a flow, not a snapshot

The monthly file holds the registrations of its own month, so a month is a flow rather than a reading of a live register: 119,742 of July 2026's 119,748 records carry a July date, and the six that do not are counted, logged and left where the publisher put them. There is no register snapshot, no survivorship correction and no revision: once the DGT publishes a month, the figure for that month never changes, and neither does the figure on this site. That also means a month cannot be shown early — it appears here about six weeks after it ended.

New cars versus used imports

New and used come from the DGT's own flag, IND_NUEVO_USADO (N or U); no rule of ours decides it. The file records first Spanish plates only — a resale between Spanish owners is in the separate transferencias file — so a car flagged used is a car receiving its first Spanish plate, that is, an import. COD_PROCEDENCIA_ITV is not an import flag (most new cars are coded as EU imports because that is where they were built) and is not used here.

Fuel groups

The electric-vehicle category CATEGORIA_VEHICULO_ELECTRICO decides first: BEV battery electric, PHEV and REEV (range extender) plug-in hybrid, HEV hybrid, FCEV other. Where the category is blank, the propulsion code COD_PROPULSION_ITV decides: 0 petrol, 1 diesel, 2 battery electric, and 4 butane / 6 LPG / 7 CNG / 8 LNG as gas. Everything else — solar, hydrogen, biomethane, ethanol, biodiesel, "otros" and a blank code — is other: two rows of July 2026's 118,217.

The category has to be read before the propulsion code, because the code describes the combustion side alone: a Mercedes GLC 300 de is a plug-in hybrid carrying the diesel code, and a fuel-cell car carries the electric one. The category is filled in for cars type-approved from about 2020 onwards, so every new car carries it, but a used import first registered earlier rarely does (6 % of those first registered in 2015–2019, under 1 % of older ones): an older hybrid import is then filed by its propulsion code as petrol or diesel. Over the 36 published months 24 of 156 imported Lexus CTs, 18 of 52 Honda Insights and 68 of 292 Toyota Prius — hybrid-only nameplates — sit in the petrol group, so the hybrid share of used imports is understated by a fraction, and the month's hybrid share by well under a point. The gas group is real in Spain rather than a used-import remnant — 4,087 new cars in July 2026, mostly Dacia's bi-fuel LPG range.

CO₂ and import age

CO₂ is CO2_ITV, the type-approval figure, recorded for practically every new non-electric car (one of 91,620 has none in July 2026). Battery-electric cars count as 0 g/km. Unlike some registers this source does carry a value for plug-in and full hybrids, so the average covers them and is a genuine new-fleet average.

Age at import is the Spanish registration minus FEC_PRIM_MATRICULACION, the first registration abroad, in years (days ÷ 365.25), grouped into brackets under 3, 3–5, 6–10 and over 10 years. The median import was 10.7 years old in July 2026; 34 of that month's 15,482 used imports carry no usable first-registration date and are left out of the age chart. The DGT does not record the country a car was imported from, so there is no origin table on the imports page.

KPI definitions

Registrations

All passenger cars (DGT vehicle type 40, turismo) that received a definitive Spanish plate in the month, from the DGT's monthly registration microdata: new cars plus used imports. Temporary plates are excluded, because the same car appears again when its plate is made definitive. Vehicles the DGT files under its off-road type (25, todo terreno: Land Rover, the Land Cruiser, the G-Class and the large premium SUVs whose approval carries the G) and motorhomes (7A) are not counted; the methodology page gives their size.

New cars / New share

Cars the DGT flags as new (IND_NUEVO_USADO = N). New share = new cars ÷ all registrations. The counts here are compared with ANFAC's monthly new-car figure on the methodology page.

Used imports / Avg import age (yrs)

Cars the DGT flags as used (IND_NUEVO_USADO = U). The file holds first Spanish plates only, so a used car here is one being imported. Average import age = the time between its first registration abroad and its Spanish plate, in years.

BEV share

Battery-electric cars as a share of all registrations in the month, new and used together. A car is battery electric when the DGT's electric-vehicle category is BEV, or the category is blank and the propulsion code is 2. Plug-in hybrids (PHEV and range extenders) are counted separately.

New-car BEV share

Battery-electric cars as a share of new registrations only.

Hybrid share

Hybrids without a plug: the DGT's HEV electric-vehicle category, as a share of all registrations in the month. It is the type-approval category and covers full and mild hybrids alike. Plug-in hybrids (PHEV) and range extenders (REEV) are counted separately. Used imports first registered before about 2020 rarely carry the category, so an older hybrid import counts by its fuel code as petrol or diesel.

Avg CO₂, new (g/km)

Mean type-approval CO₂ (CO2_ITV) of the month's new cars. Battery-electric cars count as 0 g/km; plug-in hybrids and full hybrids carry a real value in this source and are included. Cars with no recorded value are left out; the methodology page shows how rare that is.

MoM / YoY / YTD

Change versus the previous month, versus the same month a year earlier, and the calendar year to date with its change against the same months a year earlier. Percentages are shown only when the comparison month has at least 30 registrations, or 10 on the electric tables.

Normalisation

MARCA_ITV and MODELO_ITV are free text typed at the inspection station, so both are normalised before anything is counted. The make prefix and a leading NUEVO are stripped from the trade name (SEAT LEON → León, NUEVO 308 5P GT HYBRID → 308), accents are folded (CITROËN, Ë-C3 → C3), BMW is grouped by series (X1 SDRIVE20D → X1, 120D → 1 Series) and Mercedes-Benz by class (GLC 300 DE 4MATIC → GLC). Spelling variants are folded into one brand: MERCEDES BENZ and MERCEDES-AMG → Mercedes-Benz, VOLKSWAGEN, VW → Volkswagen, AUTOMOBILES PEUGEOT → Peugeot. The source truncates the trade name at 22 characters, so a few long names are matched on their truncation. A few hundred rows carry a double-encoded accent (ELÃ CTRICO, CITROÃ N) that is repaired before matching; a MINI registered under the make BMW follows its body name to MINI, and DR's EVO sub-brand is a brand of its own whichever make field it arrives under. Camper builders and the Spanish body converters that the register names as the make (Rehatrans, Bergadana, Ecoauto, Tripod, Allied Vehicles …) keep their own brand rather than being folded into the base vehicle's maker. Three models the register files under another model's trade name are told apart by their type-approval variant instead: DGT writes TOYOTA COROLLA for the Corolla Cross, TOYOTA C-HR for the electric C-HR+ and PANDA for the Grande Panda, and each gets its own row here. The full alias table is in the repository.

Regions: loaded, not published

The file carries the owner's province, the plate's province and the INE municipality, and the pipeline loads all three, but v1 publishes no regional view. The reason is leasing and renting fleets, which are registered at the lessor's address rather than the driver's: Madrid province takes 34 % of all registrations and the plate province differs from the owner province on 26 % of rows. An honest regional page needs a renting exclusion and this caveat stated first, so it is deferred rather than guessed at.

Checks

Every refresh runs the same gates, and any one of them stops the run before anything is published. File gates at ingest require at least 30,000 passenger cars in a month, every record to be 714 characters after padding, and at most 0.1 % of rows to carry a date outside the file's own month. An acceptance gate requires the top 40 makes to cover at least 97 % of registrations over the last twelve months and rejects same-prefix sibling makes and single-letter model names other than the Mercedes-Benz classes, Tesla's S, X and Y and Zeekr's X. A sanity gate rejects an export whose latest month is less than half the previous one, whose marts are empty, or whose month series has a gap since January 2023. An identity gate requires the published totals to equal the raw file's counts under the definitive-plate filter exactly, and the seven fuel groups to partition the month. A fuel gate keeps the other group under 2 % and a coverage gate keeps rows with neither an electric category nor a mapped propulsion code under 0.5 %. Finally a JSON audit re-derives every share, rank, month-over-month, year-over-year and year-to-date figure from the exported files and compares it with what was written.

Caveats

• Counts are the passenger cars that received a definitive Spanish plate in the month, from the DGT's monthly microdata file for that month. The file is published about six weeks after the month ends and is final: a month never changes once published, and there is no register snapshot and no survivorship correction. Temporary plates (COD_CLASE_MAT 7) are excluded and counted only when they become definitive.
• Percentages are shown only when the comparison month has at least 30 registrations.
• Brands with fewer than 50 registrations over the 36 months have no brand page and appear as plain text in the tables.
• Off-road passenger cars (DGT type 25, todo terreno) and motorhomes (7A) are not counted; see "What is counted". Land Rover, Jeep and Porsche are the brands most affected.
• A used import first registered before about 2020 rarely carries the electric-vehicle category, so an older hybrid import is counted by its propulsion code as petrol or diesel.
• Registration is not sale: dealer demonstration stock and leasing fleets register cars too, and a used import is a car changing country rather than a car being sold new.

Data files and licence

Every page is generated from JSON under /data/es/: meta.json, months.json, YYYY-MM.json (with kpis, models[], makes[], bev_models[], bev_makes[] and import_age[]), makes.json and makes/<slug>.json. The DGT data is reused under Ley 37/2007 with the attribution "Origen de los datos: Dirección General de Tráfico (DGT)", and this site's content and derived data are CC BY 4.0 — attribute "auto-stats.eu (data: DGT)".