Les Escaldes, Andorra · Limited traffic zone
Official name Ordinació del 29-3-2019 de modificació i refosa de l'Ordinació reguladora de l'accés de vehicles rodats a la zona de Vivand
In force in Les Escaldes right nowTuesday, 13 October 2026 at 11:05 · Europe/Andorra
The 'accés lliure les 24 h' entries in article 5 are not an opening of the zone and are deliberately not encoded as windows. They belong to two categories only — occupants of a garage space inside the zone, who may not stop at all, and clients of hotels with a pre-existing licensed luggage bay, for fifteen minutes — and encoding them would tell every driver the avenue is open around the clock, which is the opposite of what article 2 says.
For residents, traders, self-employed professionals and works vehicles, the hours are not public. Article 5 says 'segons estableixi l'autorització' — whatever the authorisation lays down — and for residents and traders that authorisation is exceptional and must be applied for at least twenty-four hours in advance. There is no timetable to encode.
The fifteen-minute caps are maximum stopping times for admitted vehicles, not access windows. They apply to hotel clients, to vehicles attending an on-duty pharmacy, and to pre-booked taxis admitted in an emergency.
This encoding says when the restriction is in force, not where you are. The perimeter is not held as geometry — see boundary coverage — so the warning is at city level, and a driver still has to read article 1's definition and the signs. Article 4 requires authorised drivers to use only the signed streets.
No public-holiday rule is encoded. The ordinance names no holiday, and no Andorran holiday calendar is held in this corpus. The one calendar-like term it does use is the guard hours of a pharmacy, which it defines by reference to ordinary trading hours rather than by date.
Operating times only, read from the source below. It does not check your vehicle.
Vivand is the pedestrianised stretch of the avinguda Carlemany in Les Escaldes, between the carrer de la Unió/carrer del Valira and the avinguda de les Escoles/carrer del Picó, together with the cross-streets that give access to it — and the Comú d'Escaldes-Engordany closes it to wheeled vehicles as a matter of principle.
Article 2 states the general rule as a prohibition of access for any type of wheeled vehicle, with the exceptions that follow available only to vehicles of fewer than seven seats. 'Wheeled vehicle' is defined as widely as in the neighbouring parish: everything guided or not by a human being, powered or not, on one, two or four wheels, and skates and skateboards by name.
Single-seat wheeled vehicles specifically adapted for people with reduced mobility are outside the definition entirely and may enter at any time. Six categories may enter, and every one of them is a status plus paperwork rather than a payment.
Two need a standing authorisation: occupants — owners or tenants — of garage spaces inside the zone, who have free access around the clock but may not stop, and who must register their plates with the Comú; and works or service vehicles, where the job cannot be done from the cross-streets, on prior authorisation.
Two need an exceptional authorisation applied for at least twenty-four hours in advance: residents of the pedestrian zone, and traders or self-employed professionals with an authorised activity inside it.
Two more work off a circumstance: clients of hotels inside the zone, but only where the hotel held a licence for a luggage loading bay on the public way before the zone was created, with a fifteen-minute maximum; and vehicles going to an on-duty pharmacy during its guard hours, also fifteen minutes. Pre-booked taxis get in only in an emergency, after telling the Servei de Circulació, and also for fifteen minutes.
In every case the ordinance says stopping should preferably happen in the cross-streets or the public car parks rather than inside the reserved area. Deliveries are refused outright: goods may not be brought in for loading or unloading, and must be handled from the public car parks or from the bays laid out for the purpose in the cross-streets.
Anyone admitted must use only the signed streets, take the shortest route, keep to 10 km/h and give way to pedestrians at all times. Enforcement is by number-plate recognition cameras feeding a control centre at the Comú's Servei de Circulació, and the ordinance says plainly that drivers of unauthorised vehicles are penalised either directly by traffic officers or on the strength of the recorded images.
The Comú's own service vehicles and all emergency services sit outside the whole regime of hours, circulation and parking.
Butlletí Oficial del Principat d'Andorra (BOPA) núm. 32, any 31, 2 d'abril del 2019, section 12. Comú d'Escaldes-Engordany / Ordinacions i reglaments — the Principality's single official gazette, which publishes the acts of all seven comuns alongside those of the Govern and the Consell General. This is the consolidated text: the ordinance calls itself a modificació i refosa, it recites the original of 19 July 2013 and the previous recasting of 10 December 2018, and it was approved by the Comú in session on 29 March 2019
There is no daily charge in this scheme, measured on the text rather than assumed. The ordinance runs to nine articles and a table, and it contains no price, no tariff, no fee and no occurrence of the word euro.
Nothing in it is for sale: the doors through article 2 are all statuses — a mobility-adapted vehicle, title to a garage space, residence, an authorised trade, a hotel with a pre-existing luggage bay, an on-duty pharmacy, an emergency taxi booking — and the two articles that say how to get the paperwork, 7 and 8, ask for proof of that status and name no payment.
Article 7 wants the title by which the applicant occupies a parking space inside the zone; article 8 wants the title to a property there or the authorisation to run a commercial activity or a liberal profession. Neither asks for money. 'Free' is deliberately not claimed either: the ordinance is silent on whether the Comú charges for issuing an authorisation, and silence is not a zero.
Not estimated.
The prohibition itself has no hours: article 2 bans access for any type of wheeled vehicle to the reserved pedestrian area without attaching a window, a weekday or a season to it, and article 5's table sets out the regime for Monday to Sunday alike. There is no hour at which Vivand reopens to ordinary traffic.
What the table does contain is a per-category timetable for the vehicles that may enter, and it is worth reading as six separate answers rather than one. Occupants of a garage space inside the zone have free access twenty-four hours a day, with no stopping permitted at all — they may drive through to the space and that is the whole of it.
Clients of hotels inside the zone have free access twenty-four hours a day for loading and unloading luggage, capped at fifteen minutes. Vehicles going to an on-duty pharmacy have free access during its guard hours, which the ordinance defines as the hours outside ordinary trading hours, also capped at fifteen minutes.
Residents, and traders or self-employed professionals with an activity inside the zone, have no standing hours at all: they need an exceptional authorisation applied for at least twenty-four hours in advance, and both their access time and their stopping time are whatever that authorisation says. Works and service vehicles are the same — access and dwell per the authorisation.
Pre-booked taxis may enter only in an emergency and after notifying the Servei de Circulació, for fifteen minutes. Deliveries are the one category with no hour at all, because they have no access: goods may not be brought into the reserved area, and loading and unloading must be done from the public car parks or from the bays laid out in the cross-streets.
Outside the whole regime sit the Comú d'Escaldes-Engordany's own service vehicles and every emergency service, which the ordinance exempts from the hours, the circulation rules and the parking rules together. No public-holiday rule is encoded: the ordinance names none, and no Andorran holiday calendar is held in this corpus.
Butlletí Oficial del Principat d'Andorra (BOPA) núm. 32 del 2 d'abril del 2019 — Ordinació del 29-3-2019, articles 2, 3 and 5. The per-category hours and the maximum stopping times are article 5's own table, headed 'De dilluns a diumenge'; the exclusion of comunal and emergency vehicles is the sentence that closes it
Article 1 defines the zone by name and then by street. Its scope is the whole public space known as Vivand, made up on the one hand of the pedestrian-reserved area comprising the stretch of the avinguda Carlemany between the carrer de la Unió/carrer del Valira and the avinguda de les Escoles/carrer del Picó, and on the other of the cross-streets that give access to it.
That second limb matters and is easy to miss: the ordinance's regime covers the side streets as well as the avenue, which is why article 2 can send delivery vehicles to bays 'als carrers travessers' while article 1 has already brought those streets inside the scheme.
The cross-streets are not enumerated, so the extent of that limb is defined by function rather than by list — a street is in if it gives access to the pedestrian area — and the signs at the entries are what a driver actually reads. One thing the two texts say together is worth more to a driver than anything either says alone.
This ordinance bounds its stretch of the avinguda Carlemany at the carrer de la Unió/carrer del Valira — and the Comú d'Andorra la Vella's own pedestrian-zone ordinance, in the neighbouring parish, bounds its stretch of the avinguda Meritxell at a junction it names in exactly the same words. Both publishers, independently, use the same street pair as an endpoint.
This corpus does not hold the geometry to prove the two areas touch on the ground, and that is not claimed; what is claimed is what the two acts say, which is that two adjoining parishes have each pedestrianised their end of the same commercial axis and have drawn the line at the same named junction.
They remain two separate schemes made by two separate authorities, with separate authorisations and separate camera systems, and this corpus holds them as two records for that reason. An authorisation from the Comú d'Escaldes-Engordany does not admit a vehicle to the avinguda Meritxell, and one from the Comú d'Andorra la Vella does not admit it to Vivand.
The perimeter is not published as geometry by anyone — see boundary coverage — so the street definition above is the extent.
Butlletí Oficial del Principat d'Andorra (BOPA) núm. 32 del 2 d'abril del 2019 — Ordinació del 29-3-2019, article 1, which gives both limbs of the scope and the definition of wheeled vehicle, and article 2, which sends loading to the cross-streets and the public car parks
The authority's own map: Comú d'Escaldes-Engordany
There is no emission standard for a petrol vehicle in this scheme, because the ordinance contains none at all. The full text was read and searched for emissió, contaminació, CO2, gasolina, dièsel, gasoil and Euro, and the count is zero. What article 2 reads off a vehicle is two things and neither is the engine: whether it is a wheeled vehicle at all, and — for the exceptions — whether it has fewer than seven seats.
Everything else the ordinance asks about is the driver and the errand. A new electric car with no authorisation is barred and an old petrol van belonging to the Comú's own services is admitted, which shows plainly that exhaust is not the test. Not estimated: this is a statement about what the published text does not contain.
Nor a diesel standard, for the same measured reason: the words dièsel and gasoil do not occur, nothing separates diesel from petrol, no Euro floor is set and no windscreen label is mentioned. The only vehicle properties this ordinance grades anything on are the kind of vehicle and its seat count. Not estimated.
The ordinance sets no amount, and the chain from there was followed and then deliberately stopped. Article 9 is two sentences: any contravention of the ordinance is an infringement, and contraventions are sanctioned in accordance with what is provided by 'la Llei del codi de la circulació, de data 10 de juny del 1999' and the other rules in force. No figure, no range, no class.
Two things make assembling one ourselves the wrong move rather than merely extra work. The first is that the delegation points at a code the Principality has since re-enacted: the same gazette's index carries 'Llei 12/2021, del 13 de maig, del Codi de la circulació' in BOPA núm.
62 of 1 June 2021, under Consell General / Lleis, so the act named in article 9 is not the act now in force under that title, and this record is not going to decide on the Comú's behalf which provision of the new code a Vivand entry is charged under.
The second is where the chain would have to go next: the Govern has approved a Reglament del règim sancionador del Codi de la circulació — the gazette's index carries it twice, as Decret 269/2021 of 1 September 2021 and again as Decret 484/2022 of 23 November 2022 — and neither was read for this record.
Assembling a figure would mean deciding which infringement in a national sanctioning regulation a Vivand entry falls under, which is a judgement the Comú has not published and we are not entitled to make.
Note the contrast with the neighbouring parish, because it is the whole reason one of these records carries a figure and the other does not: Andorra la Vella's zone ordinance sends the driver to its own comunal ordinance, whose article 91 prices pedestrian-priority-zone infringements at 50 €, while Escaldes-Engordany sends the driver to national road-traffic law and stops. Not estimated.
What the ordinance does state, and a driver should know, is who acts: drivers of unauthorised vehicles circulating in the pedestrian zone are penalised directly by the comunal traffic officers or on the basis of the images recorded by the camera system.
Butlletí Oficial del Principat d'Andorra (BOPA) núm. 32 del 2 d'abril del 2019 — Ordinació del 29-3-2019, articles 1 to 8: the scope and the definition of wheeled vehicle (art. 1), the general prohibition and the delivery refusal (art. 2), the six admitted categories with the twenty-four-hour notice for the exceptional ones (art. 3), the signed-streets, shortest-route, 10 km/h and pedestrian-priority conditions (art. 4), the per-category hours and fifteen-minute caps (art. 5), the camera system and the duty on garage-space occupants to register their plates (art. 6), and what must be proved for a permanent authorisation (art. 7) and for an exceptional one (art. 8)
Butlletí Oficial del Principat d'Andorra (BOPA) núm. 32, any 31, 2 d'abril del 2019, section 12. Comú d'Escaldes-Engordany / Ordinacions i reglaments. The BOPA is the Principality's single official gazette and publishes the acts of all seven comuns, which is why one publisher satisfies both denominators here. This is the consolidated operative text — the act calls itself a modificació i refosa and recites the chain it replaces, the original Ordinació of 19 July 2013 and the previous recasting of 10 December 2018 — with a disposició derogatòria repealing any earlier provision of equal or lower rank that contradicts it and a disposició final putting it in force on the day of publication. Its in-force evidence is the absence of a successor: the gazette's full-text index, searched across the whole corpus and not only this comú, returns no later act on the Vivand access regime
Next scheduled re-check: 2027-09-17.