Driving licence

How to get my Uk driving licence after changing it for Spanish but I don’t have the physical driving card - @Marcosborn85

Let me get this right...

You live in Spain now, so you gave in your UK license to exchange it for a Spanish license. Now you want your UK license back?

Bad News!!

When you exchange your UK driving licence for a Spanish one, the Spanish traffic authority (DGT) physically keeps your old UK card and sends it back to the DVLA, meaning it is permanently destroyed. To get a UK licence again, you must officially move back to the UK, establish residency, and exchange your Spanish licence back to a UK one using GOV.UK.

@Marcosborn85 There are two different problems in that question, so take whichever is yours.

If the Spanish licence was granted and the card simply never reached you, that is a duplicate. You ask traffic for it and nothing starts again. What they give you in the meantime is a paper that works inside Spain only, and driving on it outside the country is where people come unstuck.

If what you want is the UK card itself, that one is gone. The exchange sends the original back to the authority that issued it, and Spain cannot hand you a licence another country issued. Getting a UK one again means being resident there again and swapping in the other direction.

Either way you are not unlicensed. After the exchange your entitlement sits on the Spanish record, so the missing plastic is a paperwork problem, not a ban.