On October 31, 1900, a Clement quadricycle powered by a De Dion Bouton engine became the first car in Spain to receive an official license plate. Palma de Mallorca issued the PM-1 plate, rather than Madrid or Barcelona. Its owner, José Sureda y Fuentes, was a retired naval machinist living in Santa Catalina. Weighing just 130 kilos and powered by a 3-horsepower engine, the small machine marked the start of Spain’s journey into the age of cars.
The PM-1 was nothing like the grand cars that would later fill Spanish roads. It looked more like a motorized carriage than what we’d call a car today. Its top speed barely reached 30 km/h, falling to 15 km/h on hills. The wheels were 65 centimeters across. For most people, it was a curiosity, not a revolution. Sureda paid 3,000 pesetas, a huge sum equal to almost four years of a miner’s average pay. At the time, most farm workers earned just over a peseta a day. Buying a car was a leap few could afford.
Spain’s first brush with the automobile came before the PM-1. In April 1897, industrialist Vicente Juan Ribas brought a Clement Bayard from Paris to Mallorca. That car never received a license plate because Spain had not yet started registering vehicles. Ribas stored it on his estate, but no one knows for sure what happened to it. Some say his family might still have it tucked away.
No one can say what became of the PM-1 either; the trail goes cold in the records. A few relics from Spain’s early motoring days have survived, but. The Delahaye Tipo 1 from 1899, now part of the Fundación RACE collection and on display at the Museo de Historia de la Automoción de Salamanca, shows how experimental those first cars were. It had no steering wheel, just a lever called the “cola de vaca.” Its owner, the Conde del Valle, once drove it over the Guadarrama pass and later brought it out again for the 1963 opening of the Guadarrama tunnel.
These early cars signaled status and ambition, while introducing new technology. Their price kept most people out, and the machines themselves were still finding their place in Spanish life. The PM-1’s registration in Palma, rather than a large mainland city, shows how new ideas can emerge in unexpected places. As reported earlier, the Spanish car market has changed beyond recognition since then, but its roots go back to these first bold steps.
The PM-1’s quiet debut marked the jump from horse-drawn carts to engines on wheels. That shift would change Spanish life over the next hundred years. A simple, overlooked machine set it all in motion.
