Blue lights instead of orange on ambulances and fire engines

Currently, only police cars have blue lights and all other 'priority' vehicles have orange ones – which includes slow-moving cars, vans and lorries, wide loads, and those which need to block the carriageway to carry out a vital public service.

This has always led to confusion among other road users, as they have never been sure which ones to allow to pass.

Whilst drivers pull onto hard shoulders or even pavements to let ambulances and fire engines pass, they would not need to do so for a maintenance vehicle.

This will bring Spain in line with other EU countries, which is particularly important in France and Portugal where Spanish vehicles have to attend to emergency services in border areas.

As well as the change in light colour from orange to blue, registration plates will now be different for commercial vehicles.

They will be yellow for those which could produce an obstruction, and blue for emergency and priority vehicles.

Also, taxi drivers will have blue registration plates with white characters on the back and white ones with black characters on the front.

Taxi-owners have a year to change their plates to comply with the law.

The idea is for customers to be able to tell straight away whether the cab they are hailing is legitimate.