The rules on the road here
Spain rewrote its traffic regulation this summer, and the cyclist’s half of it takes effect on 1 October 2026 — in the middle of the best riding month of the year. One exemption that disappears was written for exactly this island: you may currently ride a long climb bare-headed, or ride in extreme heat bare-headed, and from October you may not.
What follows is the regulation itself, not a summary of it. Each rule is quoted from the article that carries it, in both the wording in force today and the wording that replaces it, so you can see the difference rather than take our word for it. The rules that key off the sun are joined to this site’s own daylight measurement, because “between sunset and sunrise” is a different hour in February and in July.
- New wording in force
- 1 October 2026
- Rules quoted here
- 7
- Articles moving
- 24 + 8
- Helmet exemptions left
- none
11 days away as of 20 September 2026. Until then the current wording binds.
Each one from the article that carries it, in both wordings.
Reworded, plus wholly new ones — across the whole regulation, not just the cycling parts.
Three today — a long climb, extreme heat, medical grounds. Zero afterwards.
What changes, and when
24 articles of the regulation are reworded and 8 new ones are added on 1 October 2026. Six of the seven rules below are among them. The comparison on this page is between the consolidated text as it stands today and the consolidated text as it will stand that morning — both published by the same authority, both read, both quoted.
How we got this Both redactions of the consolidated text were read from the BOE and split into articles at the publisher’s own block markers; an article counts as reworded when its body differs word for word. The amendment histories the BOE prints under each article are excluded, because they are about the article and are not part of it.Computed from the 150 articles in force and the 158 in the redaction published 2026-06-26.Computed 7 August 2026.
The seven that matter on a bike
The regulation runs to 158 articles, most of them about lorries, level crossings and tunnels. These are the ones that change what you put on, where you ride, and what the car behind you has to do.
The helmet
What you wear
in force · Art. 118.1
A helmet is required on interurban roads — which is every road you will ride here once you are past the last houses. Three exemptions exist: a prolonged ascending ramp, accredited medical reasons, and extreme heat.
Los conductores de bicicletas y, en su caso, los ocupantes estarán obligados a utilizar cascos de protección homologados o certificados según la legislación vigente, cuando circulen en vías interurbanas, salvo en rampas ascendentes prolongadas, o por razones médicas … o en condiciones extremas de calor.
from 1 October 2026 · Art. 118.2
A helmet is required on interurban roads, with no exemption for climbs, heat or anything else. Under-16s wear one on every kind of road, and anyone riding a bicycle professionally wears one in town too.
El conductor y, en su caso, los ocupantes de bicicletas y ciclos en general estarán obligados a utilizar adecuadamente abrochado casco de protección homologado o certificado según la legislación vigente en las vías interurbanas, siendo obligatorio su uso por los menores de dieciséis años en todo tipo de vías.
On this island the exemption that goes is not an abstraction. It names long climbs and extreme heat, and long climbs in extreme heat are what people fly here for.
Lights and reflectives after dark
What you wear
in force · Art. 98.1 + 98.3
When lights are compulsory — between sunset and sunrise — a cyclist on an interurban road must also wear a reflective garment visible at 150 metres. The bicycle itself carries the reflectors the vehicle regulation lists.
Todos los vehículos que circulen entre el ocaso y la salida del sol … deben llevar encendido el alumbrado … Cuando sea obligatorio el uso del alumbrado, los conductores de bicicletas llevarán, además, colocada alguna prenda reflectante que permita a los conductores y demás usuarios distinguirlos a una distancia de 150 metros, si circulan por vía interurbana.
from 1 October 2026 · Art. 118.2
Between sunset and sunrise, or whenever visibility drops badly, an interurban rider must use at least one light or reflective element visible at 150 metres. A garment is no longer specified: a light counts.
Los conductores de bicicletas que circulen entre el ocaso y la salida del sol, o en condiciones meteorológicas o ambientales que disminuyan sensiblemente la visibilidad, deberán hacer uso al menos de un elemento luminoso o reflectante … visible a una distancia mínima de 150 metros, si circulan en vía interurbana.
Sunset is the trigger rather than a time on a clock, and here it swings by nearly four hours across the year. The same evening loop needs nothing in June and needs a light in December.
Riding two abreast
How you ride
in force · Art. 36.2
Two abreast is allowed, keeping as far right as the road permits, and single file on blind sections and wherever the group is bunching traffic.
los conductores de bicicletas … podrán hacerlo en columna de a dos, orillándose todo lo posible al extremo derecho de la vía y colocándose en hilera en tramos sin visibilidad
from 1 October 2026
Two abreast is allowed on the shoulder, and on the minimum necessary part of the carriageway where there is no usable shoulder. Single file on blind sections, where the group affects the flow of traffic, and between sunset and sunrise.
los conductores de bicicletas podrán circular en columna de a dos por el arcén. En el caso de que éste no exista o no fuera transitable y suficiente, podrán circular en columna de a dos por la parte imprescindible de la calzada, si bien deberán colocarse en hilera en los tramos sin visibilidad, cuando afecten a la fluidez de la circulación, o cuando circulen entre el ocaso y la salida del sol
Most of the Tramuntana has no shoulder at all, which under the new wording is exactly the case the rule provides for: two abreast on the minimum necessary part of the road, single file where you cannot see through the corner. On the Ma-10 that is most corners.
What the car behind you has to do
What drivers must do
in force · Art. 85.4
A driver overtaking you leaves at least 1.5 metres of lateral space.
la separación lateral no será inferior a 1,50 metros
from 1 October 2026 · Art. 85.4
The 1.5 metres stays, and on any road with more than one lane in your direction the driver has to change lane completely. Outside built-up areas they must also drop at least 20 km/h below the road’s limit for the whole manoeuvre, and they may not squeeze past even if you are on the shoulder.
guardando una anchura de seguridad de, al menos, 1,5 metros, salvo cuando la calzada cuente con más de un carril por sentido, en cuyo caso será obligatorio el cambio completo de carril … si el adelantamiento se efectúa fuera de poblado, antes de iniciar la maniobra, y durante toda su ejecución, el conductor que adelanta deberá reducir la velocidad respecto al límite existente en la vía en al menos 20 km/h
This is the half of the reform a visiting rider never hears about, and it is the half that decides how the Pla feels: on the long straight roads across the middle of the island the overtake currently happens at the limit, and from October it may not.
Riding in a group
What drivers must do
in force · Art. 64 c)
Riding in a group, once the first rider is into a junction or a roundabout the whole group has priority.
Cuando circulando en grupo, el primero haya iniciado ya el cruce o haya entrado en una glorieta.
from 1 October 2026 · Art. 85.4
That priority stands, and a second sentence is added where the overtaking rules live: a group of cyclists counts as a single moving unit. A driver overtakes all of you or none of you.
Cuando los conductores de bicicletas circulen en grupo, se considerarán como una única unidad móvil.
The roads you may not ride
Where you may ride
in force · Art. 38.1
No bicycles on an autopista or an autovía — with one exception worth knowing: over-14s may use the shoulder of an autovía unless a sign forbids it, and a sign that forbids it has to be accompanied by a panel showing the alternative route.
Se prohíbe circular por autopistas y autovías con vehículos de tracción animal, bicicletas … No obstante lo dispuesto en el párrafo anterior, los conductores de bicicletas mayores de 14 años podrán circular por los arcenes de las autovías, salvo que por razones justificadas de seguridad vial se prohíba mediante la señalización correspondiente. Dicha prohibición se complementará con un panel que informe del itinerario alternativo.
unchanged
Unchanged for bicycles. The rewrite of this article is about personal mobility vehicles, which are now banned from urban tunnels and travesías as well.
Se prohíbe circular por autopistas y autovías con vehículos de tracción animal, bicicletas … los conductores de bicicletas mayores de 14 años podrán circular por los arcenes de las autovías
Every GPX this site publishes is routed over a road network with those classes taken out, which is why none of them will ever hand you a slip road.
Headphones
How you ride
in force · Art. 18.1
Riding with headphones connected to a sound device is incompatible with the attention the law requires. A bicycle is a vehicle and its rider is a driver, so this applies to you.
Se considera incompatible con la obligatoria atención permanente a la conducción el uso por el conductor con el vehículo en movimiento de … cascos o auriculares conectados a aparatos receptores o reproductores de sonido
from 1 October 2026
The same rule, worded wider: any earphone or similar device connected to a player — or any other device that reduces continuous attention — is caught.
Se considera incompatible con la obligatoria atención permanente a la conducción el uso por el conductor con el vehículo en movimiento de … casco de audio, auriculares o instrumentos similares conectados a aparatos receptores o reproductores de sonido u otros dispositivos que disminuyan la atención permanente a la conducción
The exemption written for roads like these
The helmet rule in force today is not a blanket one. It binds on interurban roads and then names three ways out of it, and two of the three describe a Mallorcan summer afternoon.
The regulation says «rampas ascendentes prolongadas» and «condiciones extremas de calor». It gives no length and no temperature — no version of it ever has. So nobody can tell you which climbs the exemption covered, and this page will not pretend to. What it can tell you is what the island puts under those two phrases.
Of the 75 climb-sides measured and published here, 37 are at least 5.0 km of continuous ascent, and the longest — Puig Major from Lluc — runs for 18.9 km. That cut is ours and not the regulation’s; the point of it is the shape of the set, which you can sort for yourself in the atlas .
How we got this Counting climb-sides whose measured length is at least 5 km of continuous ascent. The threshold is this site’s, not the regulation’s: the exemption says «rampas ascendentes prolongadas» and gives no length.Computed from the 75 published climb-sides in this site’s own measurements.Computed 7 August 2026.
And the heat: August averages 31.3 °C as a mean daily maximum at Palma airport across thirty years of records, which means the hot days are hotter than that, and the airport is at sea level while the climb is not.
How we got this The highest monthly mean daily maximum in the normals. A normal is an average of daily maxima over thirty years, so individual days run well above it — and the regulation gives no temperature for «condiciones extremas de calor» either.Computed from AEMET’s 1981–2010 climate normals for Palma airport (station B278), the same record the season chart plots.Computed 6 August 2026.
From October the argument stops being interesting: helmet on, every road, every temperature. It is worth knowing that this is a real change rather than a tightening of enforcement, because the advice you will find elsewhere — that you may take the helmet off on a long Mallorcan climb — was correct when it was written and stops being correct on a specific morning.
The rules that begin at sunset
The lighting requirement starts at sunset rather than at a time on a clock, and from 1 October 2026 the single-file rule does too — which makes both of them facts about the day you are riding rather than about the law. On that date the sun sets here at 19:32, already 108 minutes earlier than at midsummer, and the clocks have not even gone back yet.
Across the year sunset here swings from 17:29 in December to 21:20 in June — the whole year, day by day . That is the difference between a rule that catches you on the way home and one you will never meet, and it is the same figure that decides what time you should be leaving.
How we got this NOAA solar position computed for every day of the reference year at the island’s midpoint and validated against the US Naval Observatory on 73 dates, worst disagreement one minute. Local clock time, and 1 October falls before the clocks go back.Computed from this site’s own daylight measurement, reference year 2027.Computed 6 August 2026.
The island’s own restrictions
One restriction on this island is decided locally rather than in Madrid, and one national rule lands on a specific, short list of roads here.
The road out to the Formentor lighthouse closes to cars for the summer — and bicycles are explicitly exempt, which turns the most photographed road on the island into a bike-only road for the months it is shut. The two authorities that publish the window do not agree on its last day, and both dates are on the climb’s own page.
The other is Art. 38, and on this island it is a short list: Ma-1, Ma-13, Ma-19, Ma-20 are the roads OpenStreetMap classes as motorway, and they are the ones a car navigation app will try to send you down. The old roads beside them are open, and they are the better ride anyway. One caution about the shoulder exception: it applies to autovías and not to autopistas, the two are signed differently at the slip road, and this site holds no record of which of these four is which — so read the sign rather than this page.
How we got this One Overpass query, run beside the two BOE reads and stored with them. OpenStreetMap’s “motorway” class is a mapping convention, not the legal category the article names, and nothing here converts one into the other. © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbLComputed from every way tagged highway=motorway inside the island bounding box (467 ways).Computed 7 August 2026.
Which is the useful half of that rule and not the interesting one. The interesting one is what the ban costs you: every closed road, with its legal alternative measured end to end — kilometres added and metres climbed, and the answer is not the road you would guess.
The overtaking rule arriving in October is the only one that puts a number on the car, and the number depends on the road: what a driver must actually drop to, road by road — measured on this island’s own geometry.
And every rule above has a price attached to it, in an instrument this page does not quote: the amount, the article, and the half you pay for settling inside twenty days are on the fines page .
If you are hiring the bike
A hire bike is not required to arrive with lights, and most road hire fleets here do not include them. If your flight lands late or you plan an evening loop, ask when you book rather than at the counter — from October a light is the simplest way to satisfy the rule, and it is the one piece of kit nobody packs.
Compare road bike hire on the island
What your policy probably excludes
Ordinary travel insurance and many bank-card policies exclude cycling as an organised sporting activity, or cap the medical cover well below what a helicopter off the Ma-10 costs. It is worth reading your own exclusions before you fly rather than after a crash. If you need cover that names cycling, EKTA writes travel policies. Read the exclusions yourself — this site does not rank insurers, compare them or filter them for you, and nothing here is advice about which policy to buy.
Where to stay for the climbs
The rules read differently depending on where you wake up: a base in the mountains means every ride is an interurban road, and a base on the flat means most of the week is not. Accommodation in Sóller.
How to read this page
Everything quoted here is the operative clause of an article, in Spanish, because that is the language it was enacted in — a translated statute reads as though it were the law, and a translation is not. The sentence beside each quotation is what it requires, and it is ours.
The BOE publishes this regulation as a consolidated text with one version per amendment, and the URL without a date serves the newest one — which since 26 June 2026 has contained text that is not yet the rule. Both versions are cited separately here: the one published 5 June 2026, which binds today, and the one published 26 June 2026, which binds from 1 October 2026.
Sources
Source Real Decreto 1428/2003, de 21 de noviembre, Reglamento General de Circulación — the text in force · checked 7 August 2026Consolidated text, redaction published 5 June 2026. This is the wording that binds today. The BOE's URL without a date does not serve it.
Source Real Decreto 1428/2003, de 21 de noviembre, Reglamento General de Circulación — the text from 2026-10-01 · checked 7 August 2026Consolidated text, redaction published 26 June 2026, in force from 1 October 2026. The BOE marks its amended blocks «No vigente aún» and serves this redaction from the undated URL.
Source Agencia Estatal Boletín Oficial del Estado · checked 6 August 2026Disposición final tercera: «El presente real decreto entrará en vigor el 1 de octubre de 2026.» Published 26 June 2026; two provisions that do not concern bicycles — daytime lighting for personal mobility vehicles and the homologated motorcycle helmet — run a year later.
Source Dirección General de Tráfico · checked 6 August 2026The release defines the category the reform is built around and confirms the commencement date: «entrará en vigor el día 1 de octubre de 2026». It is the summary; the regulation is the rule.
How this site is researched and checked
One email when this changes
This page is built from the regulation’s own text and is re-read against it on the site’s verification cycle. Leave an address if you would rather be told when a wording moves than come back and check.