Spain

There is no rule against any particular footwear. An officer can sanction you under the general duty to keep freedom of movement, control of the vehicle and permanent attention — but only if the footwear demonstrably affects your ability to drive safely, such as slipping off the pedals.

Keep a pair of trainers in the footwell and change before you drive. Nobody is checking your shoes at a roundabout, but they will look after a hard stop.

Smoking and nicotine devices are banned inside every enclosed public space: bars, restaurants and their kitchens, shops and shopping centres, workplaces, public transport and its stations, airports, and the grounds of hospitals and schools. Children's playgrounds are covered too. Open-air terraces are not — the national law permits smoking in outdoor space, whatever a local ban may add on top.

Indoors, assume no. Outdoors, look for a sign: the rules that ban beaches and terraces are municipal, and they change one town at a time.

Using or carrying drugs in a street, a public place, a bar or on public transport is a serious administrative infraction across Spain, whether or not it is for your own use and whether or not there is any question of dealing. The band runs from €601 to €30,000, and the paraphernalia counts too — leaving it behind is named in the same article. It is not a criminal conviction, but it is the largest figure a tourist can realistically collect in Spain.

Whatever you think the local attitude is, the street is the one place it is definitely an offence. Private premises are a different question.

Spain tests for presence, not impairment: any detectable drug in a roadside test is a very serious traffic infraction at a flat €1,000 and six licence points, and prescribed medication taken therapeutically is the only exception. Actually driving under the influence is a separate criminal matter carrying three to six months, or a fine, plus a one-to-four-year driving ban. Hire cars are not exempt and the points follow the licence.

There is no morning-after margin here — presence is the test, so the previous night still counts. Take a taxi and collect the car later.

Spain has two layers here and they are easy to confuse. The state offence is LO 4/2015 art. 37.17 — drinking in a public place, street, establishment or on public transport where it seriously disturbs public tranquility — which is a minor infraction priced at €100 to €600. Separately, most Spanish towns ban botellón outright in their own ordinance, and those fines are capped by LBRL art. 141 at €750 for a minor breach, €1,500 for a serious one and €3,000 for a very serious one. Those are ceilings on what a council may set, not the amounts it charges, which is why the €3,000 figure travels so widely: it is the outer limit of municipal power, not a tariff anyone is handed for a can of beer.

The state offence needs the drinking to be genuinely disturbing someone, which quiet drinking is not. What actually catches people is the local ordinance, and that varies street by street — the plaza is usually banned and the beach often is.

National law bans smoking inside every enclosed space but explicitly permits open-air ones, so an outdoor terrace is legal unless the venue or the town says otherwise. A bill extending the ban to terraces was approved by the Council of Ministers in July 2026 and is still before the Cortes — it is not law yet.

There is no rule about footwear. The DGT sanctions it under the general duties to keep freedom of movement, control of the vehicle and permanent attention, and only when an officer judges that your shoes actually compromise driving — slipping off the pedals, for instance. It reaches €80.

Three different things get called Spanish law. A handful of rules are national with one amount countrywide. Some are national offences that each region prices itself, so the same act costs differently in Mallorca and Barcelona. Most of what catches tourists is municipal — a city ordinance that stops at the town boundary.

The Balearic decree against excess tourism requires your accommodation to expel you on the spot. Its fines of €6,001–60,000 are levied on the operator of the establishment rather than on you, which is exactly why hotels enforce it themselves. Whether a guest can also be fined directly is unsettled, so we state no figure against you.