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 Daily news from the Canaries and the islands' biggest English language newspaper on-line Driving in Spain feature :: How to pass your Spanish driving test in 437 and a half easy lessons In the driving seat It is done, finally. Whether it was the little nip of Bach’s Rescue Remedy, the clove of garlic my sister-in-law told me to put in my pocket, the pearl necklace from my mother or maybe the patience of my driving instructor José Luis, but finally, at last, at the fifth attempt, I have passed my Spanish driving test. Expensive, but worth it. Working and living in Dublin up until my late 30’s there was little need for a car - OK, maybe those who gave me lifts all over the place would disagree, but it never felt like it was a hindrance, a handicap or a drawback. In fact in many ways not having a car or having to use alternative forms of transport was a plus.  So it was with a sense of resignation that I finally realised I would have to become a driver, especially with a small and growing child soon to be reliant on parents to bring her to and from school. And so, armed with my hesitant Spanish and over-40 status I signed up with the Costa Adeje school of driving and took, metaphorically speaking at first, to the road. The first hurdle was the theory test...no, in fact the very first challenge was becoming a student again after over 20 years, applying myself to a set period of study, attending the school and taking classes when I could. Unlike many of the young students I am a working mother and couldn’t attend the school more than once or at a push twice a week. So I bought the manual and set the alarm for 6 am to study on a regular basis: learning how to drive, theoretically, in another language, is not easy, but I did it. Four months later I was ready for the test. An early rise and trip to Santa Cruz to the testing centre for the multiple choice paper. Memories of waiting outside exam halls to sit school and university finals, listening to others going over last minute revision, predicting trick questions, smoking endless cigarettes, frightening the s*^¨¨out of one another until your name is called and in you go for the 30 question test with little room for error (four wrong, you fail). Obviously my early morning studying paid off – the next day the school called with the good news. Now the practical lessons could begin. If patience is a virtue then driving instructors have to be some of the most virtuous people in the world – certainly in my personal experience this is the case. I have seen my own instructor José Luis take people who wouldn’t know one end of a spark plug from another – yours truly for example – and turn them into competent drivers who can take to the city or the motorway with ease. And while all the lessons are in Spanish, there’s enough understanding to get by and if certain words aren’t in your technical vocabulary, they soon will be! There are big differences though between learning to drive here as opposed to home in Ireland or England. For a start, after the basic “this is a steering wheel, there’s the brake, clutch, accelerator, etc.” you are on your way to Santa Cruz, multiple-lane motorways on the way, for your lessons, probably sharing the car with up to three other students. Sharing a car with three other students and an instructor is not a lot of fun, especially when you are the older female foreigner squashed beside two 19 year-old lads who are already talking about the engines they’re planning to own in between oogling pert beauties out of the car window – please. The other huge draw back is the time you spend doing the lessons, as you all travel up together, each one then has a 45 minute lesson before you share the drive back to Adeje. So if you are working it means either leaving home at 5.45 am for the 6 am start and back to the office at about 11.30 am for a full day’s work or alternatively leave the office for the 3 pm class, back in Adeje by 8.30 pm. Not great fun when you also have a young family to mind. And the cost of the classes are also double each time as the drive to and from Santa Cruz constitutes a second lesson. However let’s be clear, this is not the school’s fault, but the system’s. Despite the complicated driving skills needed to negotiate Adeje, Las Américas or Los Cristianos, there are still only driving test points in Santa Cruz so learning to drive there is essential. Combine the time and money needed to learn to drive if you live in South Tenerife and unfortunately it adds up to a level of discrimination that doesn’t look like being changed in the near future. But that’s the way it is for now, and until it changes we learner drivers will get to know parts of Santa Cruz and La Laguna that we didn’t know existed (and will probably never see again) - there are certain streets in the two cities that during peak hours are wall to wall ‘L’ plate cars – drive via Los Majuelos on a week day and you’ll see what I mean. However it wasn’t all bad, and the patient and funny José Luis was a great companion as well as a good teacher, and probably learnt a few unexpected English/Irish phrases along the way. And I learnt to drive, slowly but surely, and with some hiccups, I became competent and confident. But the worst was yet to come. The test. I had no idea how badly I would be affected by my nerves. I think it was the notion of having someone else study your every single movement for an intense period of 20 minutes, or however long you last before you have failed. This wasn’t like going into a college exam, when you know that you have all the relevant information stored in your head and the time to access it. This, for me, was on an entirely different scale. Approaching the first exam it was only when I found that my tongue wouldn’t work when I was asked for my name that I realised how nervous I was, and it showed. Within about five minutes I was back at the starting point, a clear fail in the box. But I was relatively philosophical, put it down to experience, bring on the next one. However as the test failures began to mount up I really began to feel I would never pass. I knew I could drive, but I just fell to pieces every time I was put to the test. Male and female testers, older or younger, friendly or cold and withdrawn, it seemed to make no difference. Everywhere I could see people driving with ease, young kids, old ladies. For God’s sake I even watched Noddy with my three year old and felt jealous. I wanted to go “parp parp” too! And maybe it was my sense of simply “here we go again, just get on with it” attitude that was to help me finally land that all important piece of paper. “Aprobado....Pass”, they were the words dreams were made of, and at last, on the fifth attempt, I heard them for real. And yes, in the age old tradition, I cried, and then spent hours on the phone to everyone I know telling them that it was true, I was a fully fledged driver. And a month on I have my own little car, old, no mod-cons, but I love it and it’s mine. As I said at the beginning, it was an expensive experience (not sure how much exactly, but I reckon over €3,500 given lessons and test costs), but worth it. Would it have been easier to have learnt in Ireland all those years ago? Of course, and not just because of the language differences, though despite what people may say about Spanish drivers, the learning procedure is rigorous and the tests strict. By comparison, Karl Walshe of the Irish School of Motoring told the Irish Times recently that the costs associated with learning to drive (in Ireland obviously) are in the region of €1,500 plus for a 25 year old, suggesting a “raw beginner” should take one lesson for every year of their lives. The costs, he said, are good value when all the overheads - car costs, petrol, advertising, insurance and wages - are factored in. He was referring to the need among drivers for proper professional instruction, which is obligatory here in Spain. “I wish more people would see that it does represent good value, but then again I am biased. “Young people can afford cars, petrol, insurance and even have the money to soup up their cars, but they don’t feel the need to educate themselves properly. “They don’t realise how important it is.” Really important, and, like becoming a mother later in life, I am, in some ways, a member of the “why didn’t I do this years ago” brigade. The sense of freedom is incredibly refreshing, not having to rely on my other half (bless his patience and early morning lifts) to go shopping, the ability to lunch with anyone, whenever and wherever I please, the knowledge that I can bring the child to the doctor/dance classes/parties and pools without having to rely on anyone, that’s why this is so important. Now, let’s see if I can learn to fly! By Clio O’Flynn
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