Renting a small boat in Spain from October: the licence question

Until 30 September 2026 anyone in Spain may skipper a small motor boat up to 5 metres and 15 hp without a licence, even a rented one. From 1 October the exemption only applies to private use. That is the new wording of Article 10 of Royal Decree 875/2014, amended by Royal Decree 1188/2025 of 26 December 2025 and published in the Spanish official gazette, the BOE, on 30 December 2025. Most of that decree has been in force since 31 December 2025; for the amendment of Article 10 it sets 1 October 2026 as the start date.

What stays licence free is listed in the same article: motor boats up to 5 metres with no more than 15 hp nominal power and no power restrictor, in private use; sailing boats up to 6 metres in sporting use; and beach craft. In each case no further than 2 nautical miles from the port, marina or beach of departure, in daylight only, and from the age of 18. Jet skis are excluded from the exemption. The Spanish ministry points to the number of incidents in the rental trade. So the change is aimed at the small open motor boat or inflatable that holidaymakers rent for a few hours to reach the next cove.

For anyone thinking about insurance this is not a formality. Many liability wordings for leisure craft contain a clause on the required licence: the boat may only be used by an authorised skipper who holds the licence the authorities require, and the policyholder has a duty to make sure of it. What is required is decided by the law of the sailing area. The same trip in the same rental boat that was lawful without a licence on 30 September is, on 1 October, a trip without the required licence. Hull cover often carries the same idea as an exclusion for damage caused by a person without the licence prescribed for the craft or the area. With a rental boat, it is the liability side that matters.

The question holidaymakers ask is whether their own boat liability policy follows them onto a rented boat. Some wordings extend liability cover to the skipper of a rented or chartered boat in private use, and they usually attach conditions. Typical ones are a rental contract in the skipper's own name, a maximum period such as 30 days, a limit on the size or power of the rented boat, a geographical limit such as Europe and the Mediterranean, and a clause saying the cover only applies if no other insurer pays. Damage to the rented boat itself is normally excluded. None of these conditions replaces the licence clause; they sit on top of it.

What happens after a loss without a licence cannot be answered in one line. It depends on how serious the omission was and on whether the missing licence actually caused the damage, and the answer is found in the wording and the law of the contract, not in a general rule. What is certain is that the licence is one of the first things an insurer asks about. Also unclear is which foreign licence is enough for a rental boat in Spain: the amended article does not say. Whether the rental company accepts yours, and how the Capitanía Marítima views it, is something to settle before the trip, preferably in writing.

Not affected are owners who use their own small motor boat, trailer boat or tender privately in Spain: for private use the exemption remains, within 2 nautical miles and in daylight. Anyone chartering a yacht or renting a larger motor boat needed a licence before. The change hits exactly the case many people consider harmless, the short trip in a small rental boat that the operator could hand to any adult until now. It applies in the Balearic Islands, the Canary Islands and along the mainland coast alike, because the decree is national.