How to pay a traffic ticket from overseas?

While traveling in Spain with my husband and son in May 2014, we received a speeding ticket, but we didn’t even know we had been cited until at least two weeks later when the rental car company forwarded the ticket to us by email (charging us over €30 for this “service”). The ticket, a fine of €300 (near $403), had been given electronically.

We received the ticket on May 28 while on the highway heading from San Sebastián, Spain, to Biarritz, France, shortly before the border crossing. My son remembered a sudden change in the speed limit; we must not have slowed down in time. The ticket said we were cited for going 20 kilometers per hour over the limit.

I printed the ticket out, took it to my Spanish teacher and learned that I could pay online. I tried to do this but couldn’t navigate the website since that, too, was all in Spanish.

I searched the Internet and found the website of a person who had been similarly frustrated but finally managed to pay his fine. His website gave detailed, page-by-page instructions, which I printed out before going back to the government website. Unfortunately, the government’s webpage design had changed and I couldn’t use the information.

Finally, I asked my Spanish teacher (a native speaker) to help me pay the fine online. She navigated the website just fine, but its final step of accepting the payment simply didn’t function!

She then told me that her husband had received a ticket when traveling in Spain several years ago and had run into the same problems trying to pay the fine. They even had a friend who lived in Madrid try to intervene, all to no avail. In the end, he just gave up and ignored the ticket. So far, nothing bad has happened, despite his traveling in Spain several more times.

So I’d like to ask my fellow ITN readers about this.* How did you go about taking care of a traffic ticket sent from overseas?

If you ignored a ticket, what happened? (Please tell approximately when you were in the foreign country, when you received the ticket and what is was for.)

What might the consequences be for ignoring a foreign traffic ticket?

NANCY TAN 

Fresno, CA 

*Write to Traffic Ticket from Overseas, c/o ITN, 2116 28th St., Sacramento, CA 95818, or email editor@intltravelnews.com.