Aircraft and road noise in Spain: reading the official noise maps before you buy

A flat near Málaga airport or a villa beside a motorway on the Costa Blanca can seem perfectly quiet at a Tuesday afternoon viewing. Spain keeps official noise maps for its large airports, busy roads and railways and for its larger urban areas, the strategic noise maps (mapas estratégicos de ruido). They are public. They show the average noise over a whole year at a given spot, so you can see the exposure of an address before you fly out.

They also have edges. Outside them, the map is silent.

What does a strategic noise map show, and where is one required?

It shows how loud one source, or several together, is on average over a year, in bands of 5 dB. It is required only for large sources and large urban areas.

The legal frame has three layers. The EU Environmental Noise Directive 2002/49/EC of 25 June 2002 sets the rules for assessing and managing environmental noise. Spain's Noise Act, Ley 37/2003 (Ley del Ruido), takes them over, with the stated aim of preventing noise pollution, monitoring it and reducing it. Real Decreto 1513/2005 then sets out how noise is assessed. It defines a strategic noise map as one designed to assess the overall exposure to noise in a given area from different sources.

Which sources need a map is fixed by thresholds in Article 3 of Ley 37/2003:

• a large road (gran eje viario): more than 3 million vehicles a year
• a large railway line (gran eje ferroviario): more than 30,000 trains a year
• a large airport (gran aeropuerto): a civil airport with more than 50,000 take-offs and landings a year, not counting training flights in light aircraft

Urban areas come on top. An agglomeration (aglomeración) is an area with more than 100,000 inhabitants, drawn by the competent authority under Annex VII of RD 1513/2005. Districts with at least 3,000 people per square kilometre count towards it, and dense districts no more than 500 metres apart are joined together.

Every figure on the map refers to one point: 4 metres above the ground at the most exposed façade (RD 1513/2005, Annex I). The calculation uses the sound arriving at the building and leaves out the sound reflected by that house's own façade. What reaches a ground-floor flat, or a room behind closed windows, the map does not show.

Who draws the maps, and where do you look them up?

For state-run roads and railways, and for state airports and ports, the maps are the job of the central administration, the Administración General del Estado (Ley 37/2003, Art. 4). Which body within it prepares the map for a given airport, the law does not say.

Everything else follows regional law first. Where a region has no rule of its own, the region is responsible if the map covers more than one municipality, and otherwise the town hall (ayuntamiento) is. Before approval, every noise map must be put out for public consultation (información pública) for at least one month (Art. 14.1).

The maps are collected in the SICA, the database for strategic noise maps and noise action plans. It sits under the environment ministry MITECO and is run with technical support from CEDEX. The search for the fourth round is guided. You choose the map type, the responsible body and the name of the road, agglomeration, airport or railway line. Maps can be downloaded as PDF, and some can be queried on screen under "Consulta gráfica de mapas de ruido". MITECO sorts the maps into four types: roads, railways, airports and agglomerations.

Near a large town, check two maps.

The airport or road map shows that one source on its own, while the agglomeration map covers the urban area as a whole, so a flat on the edge of a city close to an airport can appear on both, each showing only its own part.

What do Lden and Ln mean?

They are the two figures on almost every map. Both are A-weighted long-term averages over all the periods of one year (RD 1513/2005, Annex I). Neither shows the peak of a single flyover.

The regulation divides the day into three periods: 12 hours of day, 4 hours of evening and 8 hours of night. By default they run from 7:00 to 19:00, from 19:00 to 23:00 and from 23:00 to 7:00 local time, and the competent authority may move the start.

Day

• Ld: average of all day periods in a year, 7:00 to 19:00RD 1513/2005, Annex I

Evening

• Le: average of all evening periods in a year, 19:00 to 23:00RD 1513/2005, Annex I

Night

• Ln: average of all night periods in a year, 23:00 to 7:00; the index for sleep disturbanceRD 1513/2005, Art. 3 and Annex I

Whole day

• Lden: day, evening and night combined, with 5 dB added to the evening and 10 dB to the night; the index for overall annoyanceRD 1513/2005, Art. 3 and Annex I

The penalties matter most near an airport. In the Lden formula a night flight counts as if it were 10 dB louder, and an evening flight as if it were 5 dB louder. An airport with night traffic therefore scores higher on the Lden map than one with the same traffic by day. Look at both maps. Lden tells you about the burden as a whole, Ln about sleep.

Each coloured area stands for a band 5 dB wide. Annex VI of RD 1513/2005 sets the bands for Lden at 55-59, 60-64, 65-69, 70-74 and over 75 dB, and for Ln at 50-54, 55-59, 60-64, 65-69 and over 70 dB(A). An address on the map does not get an exact value. It sits in a band.

Which levels count as acceptable for homes?

Real Decreto 1367/2007 sets acoustic quality objectives (objetivos de calidad acústica). For existing areas used mainly for housing, Table A in Annex II gives 65 dB for Ld, 65 dB for Le and 55 dB for Ln, at a height of 4 metres (consolidated text, last updated 26.07.2012). For urbanised areas that do not count as existing, the objective is the table value minus 5 dB (Art. 14.2).

One detail makes the comparison easier. The maps show Lden and Ln, while the table splits the objectives into Ld for the day, Le for the evening and Ln for the night. Only the night value appears on both. An address in the Ln band 55-59 reaches or exceeds the night objective of 55 dB for an existing residential area.

Acoustic easement zones around airports and roads

Land beside existing or planned roads and railways, and around airports and ports, can be placed under an acoustic easement, the servidumbre acústica (Ley 37/2003, Art. 10). Inside such a zone, noise may exceed the quality objectives. Restrictions on land use, on activities and on buildings can also be set (Art. 3).

The zone reaches out to the farthest contour line that matches the limit for residential areas in Table A1 of Annex III, RD 1367/2007: 60 dB by day, 60 dB in the evening and 50 dB at night (Art. 8). These zones have to be written into the planning instruments for new developments (Art. 9).

For a buyer this is the line to know about. Inside the zone the noise is legally accepted and is not measured against the objectives for homes. Which zone applies to a particular plot, and what restrictions follow from it, is for the competent authority to say.

How old is the map you are looking at?

Possibly several years old. Noise maps are reviewed, and changed where needed, every 5 years from their approval (Ley 37/2003, Art. 16). Each round describes the situation in the previous calendar year.

1. 1First roundbefore 30.06.2007at first only agglomerations over 250,000 inhabitants, roads over 6 million vehicles and railways over 60,000 trains a year
2. 2Second roundbefore 30.06.2012then a new round every five years, each on the previous calendar year
3. 3Third round2017listed in the SICA; MITECO's geodata download shows this round as held in the SICA on 17.11.2021
4. 4Fourth round2022the latest round listed in the SICA

A fifth round does not appear in the SICA. A new bypass, a longer runway or extra flights in high season reach the map only when the next round is approved.

Look at which round a source shows. MITECO's geodata download states that it holds the third round as it stood in the SICA on 17.11.2021, while the SICA already lists the fourth.

Where do the maps stop, and how often do checked properties fall inside a band?

Outside large roads, large railways, large airports and agglomerations, the law requires no strategic noise map at all (Ley 37/2003, Art. 14.1). A missing map only means there was no duty to draw one. It says nothing about quiet.

Inside the mapped areas there is a lower edge too. The map of a large road, railway or airport must reach at least the line where that source's own noise falls to 55 dB Lden and 50 dB Ln (RD 1513/2005, Art. 9), and the 55 dB and 65 dB lines must be drawn on maps showing where towns lie. For agglomerations, the graphic maps must show at least the lines at 60, 65, 70 and 75 dB (Annex VI). Quieter traffic may simply not appear.

Then there is noise no strategic map covers. Neighbours, a bar with a terrace, a building site or a road below the thresholds are not on them.

Claronda checks every address in its property reports against two MITECO layers, the strategic noise maps for airports (Lden) and for agglomerations (Lden), in the version of 24.09.2026. On 29.09.2026, 435 properties had check results.

• Outside every 55 dB Lden contour387of 435 properties checked
• Inside a contour of 55 dB Lden or more48airport or agglomeration maps

Read the 387 with care. Road and railway maps outside agglomerations are not part of this check, so a property outside every contour can still stand beside a busy main road. And since agglomeration maps need only show lines from 60 dB upwards, a 55 dB band may be missing there. These figures describe the properties Claronda has checked, not Spain. No official figure states how much of Spain's land the strategic maps cover.

What should you ask before you buy?

1. Pin down the exact plot by its cadastral reference (referencia catastral); our guide to the Spanish cadastral reference shows how to read one.
2. Search the SICA for every source nearby: the airport, the road, the railway line and, in or near a large town, the agglomeration. Note which round each map belongs to.
3. Read the Lden band and the Ln band for the address, and compare the Ln band with the night objective of 55 dB for existing residential areas.
4. Ask the town hall whether the plot lies in a zona de servidumbre acústica and which restrictions apply there.
5. Ask the competent authority whether a new map is out for public consultation.
6. Visit at different times of day, in the evening and at a weekend too, and listen with the windows open.

The noise check is part of every Claronda property check, next to other official layers such as the flood maps. It shows whether an address lies inside a 55 dB Lden contour of the airport and agglomeration maps.

In short

Spain's strategic noise maps cover large roads, railways and airports and urban areas over 100,000 inhabitants. They show yearly averages in 5 dB bands at 4 metres, as Lden for overall annoyance and Ln for night noise. The latest round in the SICA dates from 2022. A blank spot means no duty to map, and the competent authority's map is authoritative for a specific address.