Until 1998, when we had to call a phone number located in our province, we didn't have to dial the 9 numbers that compose it, but we only had to dial the last 6 digits, without the prefix of the province. If we wanted to call other provinces, if we had to include it, since that's what it was for.
Before this change, it was necessary to know the Spanish and international phone codes if we made calls abroad. Along with this change and to differentiate landline numbers from mobile phones, these began to start with 6, replacing the 9 that was used until now.
Nowadays, fixed numbers in addition to starting with 9, they also start with 8. In mobile phones, starting in 2011, the 7, in addition to 6, began to be implemented to differentiate mobile phone numbers from landlines.
To this day, it does not make any sense to know the telephone prefixes of Spain, since these are included in the telephone numbers. However, it allows us to know which province each phone number belongs to, through the first three numbers that form it.
Telephone codes of Spain
As the years have passed, the number of telephones has been increasing, so new prefixes have been enabled. As I have discussed in the previous paragraph, most landline numbers start with 9, however, we can also find the 8 at the beginning, but keeping the second and third numbers.
For example, in Alicante, the prefix for life has been 965 to which we have to add 865 and 966. If you want to identify which province the phone numbers that call you belong to, below I show you a list with all the Spain phone codes.
- Álava: 945/845
- Albacete: 967/867
- Alicante: 965 and 966/865
- Almeria: 950/850
- Asturias: 984 and 985/884
- Avila: 920/820
- Badajoz: 924/824
- Barcelona: 93/83
- Burgos: 947/847
- Cáceres: 927/827
- Cadiz: 956/856
- Ceuta: 956/856 (Shares the same prefixes as Cádiz)
- Cantabria: 942/842
- Castellón: 964/864
- Ciudad Real: 926/826
- Cordoba: 957/857
- La Coruña: 981/881
- Cuenca: 969/869
- Girona: 972/872
- Grenada: 958/858
- Guadalajara: 949/849
- Guipúzcoa: 943/843
- Huelva: 959/859
- Huesca: 974/874
- Balearic Islands: 971/871
- Jaén: 953/853
- Leon: 987/887
- Lleida: 973/873
- Lugo: 982/882
- Madrid: 91/81
- Malaga: 951 and 952/851
- Melilla: 951/952/851 (shares the same prefixes as Malaga)
- Murcia: 968/868
- Navarra: 948/848
- Orense: 988/888
- Palencia: 979/879
- Las Palmas: 928/828
- Pontevedra: 986/886
- La Rioja 941/841
- Salamanca: 923/823
- Segovia: 921/821
- Seville: 954 and 955/854
- Soria: 975/875
- Tarragona: 977/877
- Santa Cruz de Tenerife: 922/822
- Teruel: 978/878
- Toledo: 925/825
- Valencia: 960, 961, 962 and 963/860
- Valladolid: 983/883
- Vizcaya: 944 and 946/846
- Zamora: 980/880
- Zaragoza: 976/876
Most smartphone manufacturers include a function natively in the system that is in charge of identifying which province the phone number belongs to that is calling us, showing this information next to the phone number that is calling us. This functionality is also available when we receive calls from outside our country.
International phone codes
In 1998, when the way we had to use telephone numbers to make calls was changed, the method of making calls abroad was also changed. Until that year, if we wanted to call abroad, we had to previously dial the number 07 followed by the phone number including the international prefix. Since then, 07 was changed to 00.
The Spanish government made these changes to use the same numbering system as the rest of Europe. In this way, the number 112, the emergency number used at that time by some autonomies, became the emergency number throughout the European Union.
If you want to know which country a telephone number corresponds to, you can consult it through the following list where we show you the international telephone prefixes.
- 1 United States
- 1 Canada
- 7 Kazakhstan
- 7 Russia
- 20 Egypt
- 27 South Africa
- 30 Greece
- 32 Belgium
- 33 France
- 34 Spain
- 39 Italia
- 40 Rumania
- 41 Switzerland
- 43 Austrian
- 44 United Kingdom
- 45 Dinamarca
- 46 suecia
- 47 Norway
- 48 Poland
- 49 Germany
- 51 Peru
- 53 cuban
- 54 Argentina
- 55 Brazil
- 56 Chile
- 57 Colombia
- 58 Venezuela
- 61 Australia
- 63 Philippines
- 64 New Zealand
- 65 Singapore
- 66 Thailand
- 81 Japan
- 82 South Korea
- 84 Vietnam
- 86 China
- 90 Turkey
- 92 Pakistan
- 93 Afghanistan
- 94 Sri Lanka
- 213 Algerian
- 216 Tunisia
- 218 Libya
- 220 Gambian
- 221 Senegal
- 225 Ivory Coast
- 226 Burkina Faso
- 227 Nigerian
- 228 Togo
- 229 Benin
- 231 Liberian
- 232 Sierra Leone
- 233 Ghanaian
- 234 Nigeria
- 235 Chadian
- 236 Central African Rep.
- 237 Cameroon
- 239 Saint Thomas
- 241 Gabon
- 242 Congo
- 243 Democratic Rep. Of the Congo
- 244 Angola
- 247 Ascension Islands
- 248 Seychellois
- 249 Sudan
- 250 Rwanda
- 251 Ethiopia
- 252 Somali
- 253 Djibouti
- 254 Kenya
- 255 Tanzanian
- 256 Uganda
- 257 Burundian
- 260Zambia
- 263 Zimbabwe
- 266 Lesotho
- 267 Botswana
- 268 Swaziland
- 290 St Helena
- 291 Eritrean
- 297 Aruba
- 298 Faroe Islands
- 299 Greenland
- 350 Gibraltar
- 351 Portugal
- 355 Albania
- 357 chips
- 358 Finland
- 359 Bulgarian
- 371 Latvia
- 372 Estonian
- 374 Armenian
- 375 Belarus
- 376 Andorra
- 378 San Marino
- 380 Ukraine
- 381 Serbia
- 385 croacia
- 386 Slovenia
- 387 Bosnian
- 420Rep. Czech
- 421 Slovakia
- 423 Liechtenstein
- 501 Belize
- 503 El Salvador
- 505 nicaragua
- 506 Costa Rican
- 507 Panama
- 508 St. Pierre & Miquelon
- 591 bolivia
- 593 Ecuador
- 595 Paraguayan
- 597 Suriname
- 598 Uruguayan
- 670 East Timor
- 672 Norfolk Islands
- 673 Brunei
- 674 Nauru
- 675 Papua New Guinea
- 676 Tonga
- 677 Solomon Islands
- 678 Vanuatu
- 679 Fiji Islands
- 680 Palau
- 681 Wallis & Futuna
- 683 niue
- 685 Eastern Samoa
- 686 Kiribati
- 687 New Caledonia
- 688 tuvalu
- 689 French Polynesia
- 690 Tokelauan
- 692 Marshall Islands
- 850 North Korea
- 855 Cambodia
- 856 Laos
- 880 Bangladeshi
- 886 Taiwan
- 944 Azerbaijani
- 961 Lebanon
- 962 Jordan
- 963 Syria
- 965 Kuwaiti
- 966 Saudi Arabia
- 967 Yemen
- 968 Omani
- 970 Palestine
- 971 United Arab Emirates
- 973 Bahrain
- 974 Qatar
- 975 Bhutan
- 977 Nepalese
- 992 Tajikistan
- 995 Georgia
- 996 Kyrgyzstan
- 998 Uzbekistan
- 1242 Bahamas
- 1246 barbados
- 1264 Anguilla
- 1268 Antigua & Barbuda
- 1284 British Virgin Islands
- 1441 Bermuda
- 1473 Granada
- 1670 Mariana Islands
- 1758 St Lucia
- 1767 Dominican
- 1784 St. Vincent & Grenadines
- 1868 Trinidad & Tobago
- 1869 Nevis & St. Kitts
- 1-284 Israel
- 1-876 Jamaica
- 1-809, 1-849 Dominican Republic
To make calls abroad from a mobile phone, we must previously enter the + sign before the international prefix. To do this, we must press and hold the number 0 until it is displayed. If the call is made from a landline phone, we must press the number 0 twice.
Special prefixes
In addition to the international prefixes, there are also prefixes for certain areas such as maritime, calls with satellite phones ...
- +800 - International toll free
- +808 - Reserved for cost sharing services
- +870 - Inmarsat Service
- +875, +876 and + 877- Reserved for mobile maritime services
- +878 - Universal personal telecommunications service.
- +879 - Reserved for national maritime / mobile uses
- +881 - Mobile satellite system
- + 882-16 - Thuraya (satellite phone service provider)
- +883 - International global code created by the International Telecommunication Union
How to make cheap international calls
To this day, it does not occur to anyone to use their mobile or landline phone to make international calls, since we can make them for free or at a much lower price over the internet. Skype is the best tool today to make calls to any phone number in the world, either fixed or mobile.
Another option, if we know that we are going to call a mobile phone number, is to use a messaging application that also allows us to make audio calls be it Telegram, WhatsApp, Line, Viber ... To know if the person we want to call uses any of these platforms, we just have to open it and look for their name among the contacts.
If it appears, you are using the application. If not, we will have to resort to other methods such as Skype or Viber, a platform that also allows us to make calls from our mobile at quite cheap prices, although unlike Skype, it does not have an application for computers.
