How I failed my Spanish driving test

They say the challenges are worth it—but some days are just bad

I’ve been driving for 25 years. Traveled hundreds of thousands of miles in multiple countries, including half of Europe. Across highways and cobblestones, and through blinding winter storms. Last winter, I drove by myself from Baja Mexico back to Washington D.C.—fifty-five hours of driving. Alone.

I’ve never once been in an accident. Never in 25 years.

And yet here I’ve gone and failed my driving test in Barcelona.

It was a stupid thing, and I’m extremely frustrated and angry, especially with myself. The practical driving test may be “notorious”—so say a hundred blog posts and YouTube videos on the subject—but I still should’ve seen the fucking sign.

There are a lot of problems with the process of getting a Spanish driver’s license. I need one because the U.S. doesn’t have a reciprocity agreement with Spain, and I am trying to do a renovation project out in the Catalunyan countryside. I need to drive. But as I’ve written, the driving schools in Spain appear to be acting in some kind of mafia cartel to restrict access to appointments.

Thus, to get a license, you’re all but required to sign up for a very expensive process with a Spanish driving school. Yet these schools have an actual incentive to keep you from passing the test—in a sense, you’re beholden to them, and the more you fail, the more driving classes you need to pay for. I’d like to get out of this racket, and maybe I will. Maybe I’ll transfer the paperwork to Tarragona province, where my property is located, so I can do my next test in the countryside rather than in Barcelona.

But aside from the schools, there’s also no getting past it: Barcelona is a tough city to drive in, and thus it’s a tough place to pass the Spanish driving test.

To begin with, it turns out that much of the defensive driving skill I’ve acquired over 25 years is likely to get me failed on the day. I’m a pretty confident driver, with plenty of experience in complicated old European city centers—but a lot of that confidence has been getting me dinged.

Before the driving test that I failed (more on that below), I’d taken six hours of driving classes around different Barcelona neighborhoods. Much of that time was spent unlearning certain habits. I had to find my inner beginner.

Only, I couldn’t drive too conservatively. The frustrating thing about the Spanish driving test is the various needles you have to thread between doing things and not doing things. Meanwhile, everyone in the city is breaking the rules—unjustified lane changes, misusing roundabouts, not fully stopping at stop signs, failing to signal, invading space against the flow of traffic when making turns, rushing through pedestrian areas, unnecessarily stopping in pedestrian areas—but if YOU break the rules during the test, you will get failed.

My driving teacher and owner of the school I’ve signed up with, bless his heart, has pretty much been a condescending asshole throughout my classes. If I drive too conservatively around pedestrian zones, he asks why I’m slowing down. If I drive too confidently, he assumes I didn’t take into account the pedestrian areas. If I make the same mistake twice, he rolls his eyes. If I make any mistake once, he shakes his head in disappointment. If I do anything even close to what he deems dangerous (again: hundreds of thousands of miles driven, 25 years of experience, zero accidents in my life), he takes control of the car, slams on the breaks, grabs the wheel out of my hand, and starts hurling a stream of criticisms. More than a few times he’s done this even when I haven’t made a mistake—he just thought I might be about to.

I’m told this could be cultural. Prickly Catalan men not saying a word of praise for the twenty things you do right, but launching into pretentious monologues when you commit the slightest error. I tell myself it’s not personal. I tell myself, if I can pass his tests, I can pass the main test. I tell myself, if I can do it here in Barcelona I can do it anywhere.

I try to keep my learner’s mindset. I know there are still things I need to learn if only to pass the test. I must be humble.

On the day of the driving exam, I wake up to pouring rain, thunder, and lightning. The test is in Montjuïc, in the hilly, slightly quieter roads in the park above Poble Sec.

We’d learned the location on Friday, so I’d spent the weekend reviewing tricky intersections specific to Montjuïc. All the turns with faded markings. The weird roundabouts. The hills, the parking signs. There are lots of YouTube videos produced by various Barcelona driving schools, all of which have teachers who seem a lot more personable than mine.

It’s 10 am and the test begins. Still raining. It’s me, my teacher, another student, and the test examiner from the DGT, the Dirección General De Tráfico.

The other student goes first. He doesn’t turn on the lights, even though it’s still pouring. The front window fogs up. He doesn’t turn on the air, even though our teacher had just reviewed that with us minutes earlier.

The other student accidentally navigates too close to cars parked on the side of the road. Twice. Then, when asked to turn left at a tricky intersection, he doesn’t see the special yield lane and instead makes an awkward left turn from a spot he shouldn’t have. It wasn’t dangerous, but that is the final straw.

The test examiner sitting next to me in the back seat tells him it’s time to pull over and change drivers.

My turn.

I adjust the seat. Turn on the lights and the air, waiting for the fog to dissipate from the windshield. Adjust the mirrors, put on my seatbelt.

The test examiner gives me the go-ahead, I pull out and start navigating around Montjuïc. I’m extra attentive to when the white lines are dotted or continuous at intersections—in classes, I had a tendency to make my turns too sharp, instead of being more “L-shaped.” I pay extra attention to pedestrian crossings. I make big shows of slowing my speed and making sure no one is coming in areas of reduced visibility. Minutes are ticking by, and so far so good.

The examiner tells me to leave the next roundabout at the second exit. It takes me down the hill, away from Montjuïc, and into Poble Sec.

I’d driven there once before, but I hadn’t reviewed anything from Poble Sec over the weekend. The streets are narrow, tight, with pedestrian crossings everywhere, one-ways, dead-ends, reduced speed limits, and lots of loading and unloading from trucks and vans blocking visibility. It’s one of the medieval, old sections of Barcelona.

I am still trying to be super attentive, but there are a lot of decisions to make in this neighborhood. I see signs compelling me to go left, and I do. Then another compelling me to go straight, and I do. Intersection after complicated intersection, through a cobblestoned pedestrian area, down a narrow one-way street, hooking left, past an unloading truck—until finally, I glitched.

Rain pouring, thunder slamming, heart beating, I came to the following intersection:

The intersection in Poble Sec that got me.

I note the big red sign above me prohibiting a right turn, and a yield, which means I’m not supposed to stop, just look both ways before continuing. I creep forward, moving straight through the intersection.

My teacher’s hand reaches for the wheel. He breaks the car from the passenger seat. The examiner in the back, in Spanish, calling me by my middle name: “Max, entry prohibited.”

We are suddenly stopped in the middle of the intersection. What I hadn’t noticed was the round, red sign with the white bar in the middle on the opposite left corner. It means prohibited to enter. I couldn’t turn right, but I also couldn’t go straight.

No one was around. It was a quiet intersection. Not a car or person in sight.

But it was still an “eliminating” error.

I’d failed.

On the way back to the driving school, our teacher reamed us both. We’ve practiced this, he said. He rolled his eyes. He said he didn’t understand how we both could make these kinds of mistakes. I’d actually been at that intersection during one of our classes, he reminded me, and he was right. I had been, and I should’ve known.

I’d messed up, and the only thing I can say by way of excuse is that, when it comes to the Barcelona driving test, every single intersection, turn, and roundabout, is an opportunity to make one of a dozen mistakes. I’d managed to avoid all of them for most of the entire exam, until I didn’t.

Our teacher parked the car back at the driving school. We got out. It was still pouring.

I was angry and frustrated. A little bit at the system, for all its strictness, a little bit more with my teacher, who wasn’t helping matters. But mostly at myself. I stewed in the anger and the frustration, stewed in it in the rain, stewed in it on the bus, and back at the apartment. It was my fault.

I wanted this to all be over. I wanted to drive again. I wanted this stress off my mind. Now it all needed to continue, and I had no one to blame but myself. Forty-two years old, and a failed Spanish driving test alumn.

They say moving to another country is hard. Harder if you don’t know the language. Sometimes you get to challenges (“But they’re sooo worth it!” you hear people say), such as passing a very tough driving test in a complicated driving city, in the pouring rain and thunder.

But you find a way to overcome those challenges. There will be another test, after all.

Still, some days are just bad days. And this was one of them.