New low emissions zone prompts owners to register more than 2,000 vehicles in Malaga city

Malaga’s city’s low emissions zone (known by its Spanish initials ZBE) came into force on Saturday with little effect apart from the appearance of new signs indicating the limits of the area. For the first year no vehicle will be fined for driving within the restricted area.

From 30 November 2025, cars without an environmental sticker (the oldest ones), which are registered outside the city, will no longer be allowed to enter the restricted city-centre area. From the end of 2026, the fines will extend to those with B stickers.

Faced with these future restrictions and potential fines, many drivers of older vehicles who live outside the city, or others who do live in Malaga but their vehicle is registered in another town, are planning ahead. By the end of the year some 2,000 extra vehicles will have joined the city’s register, with many owners living in neighbouring commuter towns such as Alhaurín de la Torre or Rincón de la Victoria who work in the city centre using relatives’ addresses or company headquarters to move them into the city.

From January to September of this year there have been 900 changes of address, of which at least 70 per cent were from outside the city of Malaga. Meanwhile, from January to November there have been 1,400 transfers. That is, in a matter of six weeks there were 500 extra procedures, which is “a very significant increase”, in the words of the president of the official association of administrators, Daniel Quijada.

The deadline for registering old cars in the city to be eligible for the residents’ exemption from the restrictions when the fines come in is this coming 31 December.

The exemption for vehicles registered in the city before the end of the year is expected to last for four or five years. However any old vehicles that change hands within the city after 1 January 2025 will no longer be eligible.

The idea is to allow local people to make the most of the useful life of their vehicles but to opt for a more environmentally friendly vehicle when they buy a new one.

Malaga’s low emissions zone covers around 400 hectares of the city centre. The council’s medium-term objective is to reduce traffic by 26,000 vehicles per day. In the first year of issuing fines, from 30 November 2025, the estimated revenue for municipal funds is 11.4 million euros.

The new ZBE is controlled by 53 checkpoints and 97 cameras, so there is no need for vehicles to have the physical sticker visible on their windscreens. The number-plate reading system will be enough to detect unauthorised vehicles.

This is not an initiative of Malaga city council but the application of an EU directive being implemented at a national level in Spain in towns and cities with over 50,000 inhabitants. In Malaga province the first municipality to bring in the ZBE was Estepona.

Marbella, Fuengirola, Mijas, Vélez, Rincón, Benalmádena and Torremolinos are also in different stages of bringing in the measure.

In Spain as a whole more than 30 large towns or cities have already applied ZBE restrictions, many of them in the regions of Madrid and Catalonia.