There is nothing more annoying than going out to the street or the parking lot in the morning and seeing that yourYour car has disappeared. They have stolen. And it is not something that only happens with high-end cars, but also with mid-range and low-end cars. And much more frequently than one imagines. In Spain, 89 cars are stolen every day.
According to data from the Ministry of the Interior, available on its statistical portal, car theft has increased by Spain have increased between January and June 2024 a 2,5% compared to the same period last year.
It is in Cantabria and the Valencian Community where car thefts have grown the most
Unsurprisingly, it is in the most populated Autonomous Communities that most cars are stolen. Cataloniawith 4,128 stolen cars, leads the ranking of the communities where the most vehicle thefts have been reported in the first half of the year. It is followed by Community of Madridwith 3,614 robberies, Andalusiawith 2,964 “vehicle thefts” and the Valencian Community with 1,640 vehicles stolen.
The increase in robberies, however, is uneven across Spain. While it has increased slightly in some Autonomous Communities, such as Madrid (+1.1%) or Catalonia (+0.7%), in other regions of Spain the increase is much more striking.
The case of Cantabria is particularly striking, as thefts have increased by 80% in the first half of the year, with 101 cars stolen compared to 56 in the first half of 2023. Castilla La Mancha has also seen car thefts skyrocket in percentage terms, as they have risen by 37.8%, with 379 cars stolen in the first six months of the year.
Even so, the largest increase in absolute terms has taken place in the Valencian Communitywhere the number of robberies has increased from 1,489 in 2023 to 1,640 in 2024, representing an increase of 10.1%. Along with these increases, some communities have seen robberies decrease, such as in Galicia (-14.7%), the Basque Country (-4.9%), Navarre (-4%), Asturias (-18.9%) or the Balearic Islands (-4.1%).
As for the most stolen cars, they are still the SEAT IbizaVolkswagen Golf, SEAT León, Ford Focus and BMW Series 3 are the most sought after by thieves.
While a small portion may end up abroad as second-hand cars (not on the same scale as a decade ago), they are often stolen to be scrapped for their spare parts. They are popular models and there is a high demand for spare parts for these models.
According to data from UNESPA (Spanish Union of Insurance and Reinsurance Entities), they are also usually models with an average age of around 10 years. With a decade behind them, the cars have often already left the brand’s official network of workshops and the cheapest possible spare parts are sought.
Source: www.motorpasion.com
