When we crossed the Spanish border with our campervan we had already spent over a month in France, emptied one of our German 11 kg gas bottles and were well into the second. So it was about time to solve the gas problem.
The hurdles to tackle before you have your van nice and cozy in Spanish winter are as follows: Spanish gas bottles don’t fit on German and other European gas systems also Spain does not allow refilling gas tanks and it is rather complicated to get your hands on your first Spanish gas bottle.
I had bought adapters for most European countries but in Spain it is a little more complicated.
Meanwhile we have solved the problem but as I have not found any complete advice on the net, I will put what I have learnt out there myself.
To my knowledge there are two ways for foreign campervans to get their gas sorted in Spain.
Get a spanish bottle and connect it
The Spanish gas bottle has a special snap on connector that I managed to buy in a camping store in Saragossa. I would assume that the product is available in general hardware stores too.
I found the above product on amazon. It already has a German gas adapter on it, so a German gas system can be connected directly to this.
The product I bought did not have the German piece on it but I bought that before setting off as part of a set of German to European adapters, also on amazon.
With the above adapters you are all set to go on a gas tank hunt.
Spanish gas bottles can be bought at Repsol and Cepsa fuel stations. Unfortunately if you don’t have a Spanish address they won’t let you buy one. There might be ways to overcome this – like give some bogus address or know someone who will ‘lend’ you their address but I did not try any of that and instead went to try buy a used bottle.
There are bottles for sale on facebook marketplace but they were always several 100 km away from where I was. I ended up running pretty low until I found a half full 6 kg propane tank in a second hand store in Madrid. I had a not so great time running it all the way through town back to my van on my mountainbike.
It is bound to be easier if you are on the Mediterranean coast. I was told that most big camp sites will sell you a bottle. I have found that little fuel stations (not repsol or cepsa) in remote areas will be a lot more flexible about their gas tanks. I managed to change my 6 kg propane tank against a 12 kg one and later against a propane one without any problems.
Once you have a tank and the adapters in place you are all set. Changing empty tanks against full ones is no problem at all and gas is very cheap in Spain.
I am now using my Spanish tank with my rather empty German tank as backup. If I feel brave I might go and try the following to top up my german tank.
Refill your foreign bottle with LPG
This information is based on what I was told by someone who does it like this and I do not recommend doing it. I have not tried it myself, it is not legal and rather unsafe unless you know what you are doing.
Apparently there are fuel stations mostly along the Spanish Mediterranean coast that will fill your European bottle with LPG. This is quite illegal and not without risk.
What is required is an adapter from your bottle to Spanish LPG tank nozzle as you would find it on a Spanish LPG car. I am reasonably sure that this is what you need for a German tank. Some of the servos that are willing to do this have the adaptors required.
The risk is, that you overfill your bottle which (so I heard) could trigger some kind of overpressure burst valve and thus release gas and make the tank unusable.
One thing I have learnt in 12 years on a boat is that you do not want to mess with gas. So the best advice is to not do this.
The secret is to not overfill. From what I was told LPG is delivered by the litre at gas stations. A litre of LPG weighs around half a kg so a 11 kg bottle would take 22 l of LPG at most. To stay on the safe side you would have to have an idea of how much gas is still in your tank (ideally it would be empty) and then fill in significantly less than the remaining amount. So if you fill 18 l of LPG into an empty 11 kg tank you might be reasonably safe. Or not..
Hopefully the guys at the servo know what they are doing too. You also need to find a servo that will do it and has the required adapter for your tank.
There is a list that circulates among the van community with the addresses of the servos that will fill your tank with LPG. I am not putting it online here because I don’t want to get myself or anyone else in trouble. If you are desperate send me a message..