Around 14,500 people in Malaga province are twiddling their thumbs while waiting for driving licence practical test

Lorena Cádiz

Monday, 21 April 2025, 18:08

According to calculations by the APAE provincial association of driving schools in Malaga, at the moment there are around 14,500 people in the province waiting to take the practical test to obtain their driving licence. The organisation estimates that it can take between two and three months from the time a student passes the theory test until they can take the practical test for the first time. Moreover, if the student does not pass the practical test the first time, they will have to wait between one and two months more before being able to take it again.

This situation is affecting driving schools throughout the province, which feel how their businesses, most of which are small- or medium-size, are blocked as they wait to be able to send their students to the exam. According to Antonio Martín, owner of the Villablanca driving schools in Fuengirola and president of APAE, such a delay directly affects the activity of the association's schools (around 200 out of an estimated 250 in the province).

The origin of this problem lies in the lack of traffic examiners - a limitation that affects the whole of Spain and especially areas where the population has grown a lot in recent years, such as Malaga.

"We know that they are optimising all the resources they have in Malaga, but they need between five and ten more examiners than they currently have." The problem is exacerbated when the holidays come around: summer, Easter and Christmas. These are the times when driving schools receive the highest volume of customers, most of them young students who take advantage of the holidays to get their licences. This leads to more demand but less examination capacity, as these periods coincide with the time when the currently active examiners take a few days off.

"This is a lifelong problem. In Malaga, we have the same examiners as ten years ago, despite the population growth that has taken place in that time and with the added bonus that then there were 16 tests a day and now there are 12, because of the way of examining has changed, with longer exams for better quality," said the president of the employers' association.

It should be remembered that a traffic examiner is a civil servant post, dependent on the Directorate-General of Traffic (DGT), which in turn depends on the Ministry of the Interior.

"We can't understand why they don't use resources. We are talking about a sector where everyone who wants to take the exam pays the fees religiously and in advance. This means that an examiner earns the administration no less than 3,000 euros a month, after having paid all the expenses related to the job. It also generates wealth, as a new driver invests in a car, takes out insurance, visits garages, travels and consumes."

According to APAE, the number of people on the waiting list fluctuates, going up or down depending on the time of year and the year, but it is always high. "We have had as many as 18,000 people in the province waiting to take their exams," Martín said.

Due to this bottleneck, the DGT created a computer system that manages the quotas of people that each driving school can present when there are exams. Normally, a driving school can take its students to take their exams twice a month. A figure is calculated based on the number of students waiting at that driving school and the percentage of them who are taking the practical test for the first time. "If someone fails, they have to wait between one and two months to take the test again. Logically, the instructor is not going to be giving them lessons for two months straight because the student will be waiting for their next exam. Likewise, students who are taking the exam for the first time shouldn't have to wait three months before they even get a chance to present themselves for the exam."

The DGT is putting some pressure on driving schools to ensure that their students are as well prepared as possible for the first test and that the need to repeat the test is reduced as much as possible. Driving schools state that, when their students take the test, "they are not trying their luck" and they go as prepared as possible. However, anything can happen and when a student doesn't pass the first time, "the second time they are always going to be less prepared, because they can't do two months of continuous training. It is normal for them to take three or four classes before the exam, to which must be added the nerves".

Martín explained that the school is "the first to suffer if it does not prepare its students well, because the computer system reduces the quotas. Both the student and the school have every reason to always try to get a pass on the first try".

The APAE believes that the sector is going through "a complicated time", as all the costs of the business have risen. "There are some companies that are at the limit; for others, things are going reasonably well, within the perversity of this system, which does not allow each company to showcase its working capacity, but does require us to submit taxes at 100%. Those who suffer the most are the smaller schools, which have two students per cycle, that is, four people examined per month."