That figure appears in the 2025 report of the State Prosecutorís Office, presented on Thursday by its head, Teresa Peramato, during the opening ceremony of the Judicial Year, presided over by King Felipe VI and held at the Supreme Court in Madrid.
The section devoted to road safety, overseen by Chief Prosecutor Mario Sanz, sets out the main 2025 figures on the criminal consequences for drivers who breach traffic regulations.
SPAIN IN SEARCH OF ROAD SAFETY AWARENESS Last year, Spain issued a total of 74,560 convictions against drivers for violating the Criminal Code's road safety provisions. This was the second-lowest figure since at least 2010, when the State Prosecutor's Coordinating Office for Road Safety began systematically recording criminal proceedings in this area, and was surpassed only by 2020, when 66,648 convictions were issued amid limited road travel following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The all-time record was 104,660 convictions in 2022, followed by 97,359 in 2012 and 95,302 in 2024. Cataluña led the regional ranking for convictions against drivers last year, with 18,051, followed by Andalucía, with 12,197, and the Community of Madrid, with 8,733.
“PRIMACY”
Driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs has been a criminal offense since December 2007, while driving without a license has been one since May 2008. For the first time in the historical series, convictions last year for driving without a valid license (39,217, or 52.6% of the total) exceeded those for driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs (31,159, or 41.8%).
Indeed, the four years with the highest numbers of drivers convicted of driving without a license are the last four, with 38,383 convictions in 2022, 36,859 in 2023, 42,229 in 2024 and 39,217 in 2025.
The three typical forms of driving without a license covered by Article 384 of the Criminal Code—loss of validity due to losing all points, judicial disqualification and never having obtained a license—and, according to the State Prosecutor's report, "emerge this year as the quantitatively most significant of all road traffic offenses, displacing the primacy previously held by the offense of driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs."
ALCOHOL AND DRUGS
By contrast, last year saw the lowest number of convictions for driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs (31,159) since at least 2011. This decline, together with the drop in prosecutions by the Public Prosecutor's Office, may be partly due to "reduced police enforcement activity," since, according to the report, the number of breath tests carried out last year by the Civil Guard's Traffic Division (ATGC) fell by 17%, although it still conducted more than six million such tests.
The report stresses that, as in recent years, there is "greater public road safety awareness, recovering some of that lost immediately after the pandemic, although there may also be a certain shift from alcohol consumption to other substances, given that in 2025 the number of administrative sanction proceedings initiated over the presence of drugs increased within the DGT's area of responsibility."
Meanwhile, administrative sanction proceedings over the presence of drugs following ATGC checks have continued the upward trend that began in 2023, with around 3,000 more cases than in 2024, reaching the highest levels in the historical series. "As we have stressed in previous years, we insist on the need for new preventive and educational policies, in addition to sanctions, to address the drugs-and-driving link, which is developing at an increasingly alarming rate," the report states.
As usual, most of the Public Prosecutor's Office's indictments last year were filed through urgent proceedings or fast-track trials, totaling 83,206 out of 116,453. In addition, there were 35,273 driving bans and 1,577 license validity cancellations.
