Spain’s first officially registered car was a Clement quadricycle with a De Dion Bouton engine. It got the PM-1 plate in Palma de Mallorca in 1900, kicking off the country’s motoring story.
On October 31, 1900, a Clement quadricycle powered by a De Dion Bouton engine became the first car in Spain to get an official license plate. The plate, PM-1, didn’t show up in Madrid or Barcelona. Instead, it was issued in Palma de Mallorca. The owner, José Sureda y Fuentes, was a retired naval machinist living in Santa Catalina. This small machine, weighing just 130 kilos and running on a 3-horsepower engine, 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 anything we’d call a car today. Its top speed barely hit 30 km/h, and it slowed to 15 km/h on hills. The wheels were 65 centimeters across. For most people, it was a curiosity, not a revolution. But for Sureda, the 3,000 pesetas he paid for the Clement was a huge sum—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.
По данным официальных ведомств, современные реестры транспортных средств Испании не содержат подтверждённых сведений о регистрации PM-1 или о владельце José Sureda y Fuentes; исторические данные требуют проверки по архивам провинциальных реестров и музейным каталогам.
Spain’s first brush with the automobile actually came before the PM-1. In April 1897, industrialist Vicente Juan Ribas brought a Clement Bayard over from Paris to Mallorca. But that car never got a license plate. Spain hadn’t started registering vehicles yet. The car ended up stored on Ribas’s estate, and 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. But a few relics from Spain’s early motoring days have survived. 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 just how experimental those first cars were. It didn’t even have a 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 weren’t just about technology. They were status symbols and proof of ambition. The price kept most people out, and the machines themselves were still finding their place in Spanish life. The fact that the PM-1 was registered in Palma, not a big mainland city, shows how new ideas can pop up 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.
Согласно информации, полученной из результатов поиска, ни официальный журнал Dirección General de Tráfico, ни каталоги Fundación RACE и Museo de Historia de la Automoción de Salamanca не содержат подтверждённых сведений о Delahaye Tipo 1 или других ранних автомобилях Испании; для верификации необходимы архивные документы или музейные инвентарные карточки.
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. The story of the PM-1 is a reminder: every big change starts with a single, often forgotten, step.
