Does this also apply to my flight from the Canaries to Italy?

Not under the Spanish order, which covers only arrival from Italy. On departure the Italian side may check: it has notified its own controls until 1 October 2026.

Is my driving licence enough?

No. Your Europe expressly lists driving licences as not being travel documents; an identity card or passport is required.

What happens if I arrive without a valid document?

Entry cannot simply be refused. EU law requires the authorities first to give an EU citizen every reasonable opportunity to obtain the documents or to prove their citizenship by other means.

Should I allow extra time at the airport?

There is no official recommendation. The founding order in fact obliges the authorities to limit waiting times and to give priority to minors, families and vulnerable people.

Can the measure run beyond 7 October?

Yes, but not by itself. A new order would be needed, with an updated assessment of necessity and proportionality.

CANARY ISLANDS · TRAVEL

Until 7 October: Spain extends identity checks on arrivals from Italy

Anyone landing in the Canary Islands on a flight from Italy from 23 September onwards may be asked for an identity document at the aircraft door. Spain’s Interior Ministry has extended the internal border checks reintroduced in August for a third time, this time until 24:00 on 7 October 2026. The legal basis is Orden INT/977/2026 of 16 September, published today in the Boletín Oficial del Estado. It covers only air and sea connections whose last point of departure is in Italy — and only arrival in Spain.

19 September 2026 · 5 min. · By Julia Roca Bethencourt · Editorial responsibility: Matthias Camenzind, Editor-in-Chief

Photo: Falk2, CC BY-SA 4.0 (illustrative image).

The order and its figures

Orden INT/977/2026 of 16 September 2026, reference BOE-A-2026-19485, BOE no. 232, page 123909: 15 calendar days, from 00:00 on 23 September to 24:00 on 7 October.
Third consecutive order after INT/846/2026 (8 August to 7 September) and INT/932/2026 (8 to 22 September). By the orders’ own arithmetic, 30 plus 15 plus 15, that is 60 days; on the calendar, 8 August to 7 October is 61 days.
Scope under article 2 of Orden INT/846/2026: passenger flights and vessels whose last airport or port before arrival lies in Italy. Connections from other member states and purely technical stopovers without boarding are excluded.
In practice: random checks on 5 to 10 per cent of passengers per aircraft, focused on third-country nationals. By 13:00 on 31 August, 12,885 people had been identified across Spain on 1,111 flights, with 1,885 officers deployed. Ministerio del Interior via Europa Press, 31 August 2026.
Traffic volume: 834,108 Italian visitors to the Canaries in 2025, the fifth-largest foreign source market (Instituto Canario de Estadística). All Canary airports together handled 54,753,915 passengers in 2025 (AENA, 13 January 2026).

What the order covers — and what it does not

The text runs to one page and refers back to the founding order of 7 August for everything substantive. Three points matter to travellers. Direction: the checks apply to people arriving from Italy; departures from the Canaries to Italy are not covered by the Spanish order. Mode: air and sea only, land borders do not appear in the text. And the trigger: what counts is the last airport before arrival, not nationality. Passengers connecting through Munich or Madrid fall outside it; those landing directly from Milan or Rome do not.

The reason is in the BOE — but not in this order

The extension gives no reasons of its own. It states only that the “razones de urgencia y de amenaza grave para el orden público y la seguridad interior” persist. They are set out in the founding order INT/846/2026: migratory pressure on the central Mediterranean route, for which the order cites Frontex figures — 66,328 detections of irregular crossings in 2025 against 19,403 on the western route. It adds difficulties in transferring asylum seekers back to Italy, citing European Commission Communication COM (2026) 387 final of 15 July 2026, and the use of the routes by criminal organisations. Anyone treating the measure as unexplained is reading the wrong one of the three orders. What remains true: since 7 August no fresh reasoning has been published.

Which document belongs in your hand luggage

For EU citizens, a valid national identity card or a valid passport will do; either one is enough. A driving licence is not: the EU portal Your Europe states expressly that driving licences and bank or tax cards are not travel documents. Italian citizens face one further change, unrelated to these checks but biting right now: since 3 August 2026 the old paper carta d’identità is no longer valid for leaving the country, as the prefectures of the Italian Interior Ministry state; the electronic CIE and the passport are. Third-country nationals — including residents of Italy or Spain — need a passport and a residence permit together, plus a visa where applicable.

Which Canary arrival points are affected

The order names no airports; article 2.4 leaves the list to instructions from the State Secretariat for Security. In practice it reaches the islands with direct connections to Italy: the Interior Ministry’s daily tallies list Tenerife South, Gran Canaria, Lanzarote and Fuerteventura — for 30 August, 30 identifications on seven flights at Tenerife South, 12 on two flights at Gran Canaria, 3 on two at Lanzarote and none on the single flight to Fuerteventura, a few dozen people a day across the whole archipelago. Diario de Avisos counted 37 direct routes and 73 weekly flights in August; some 60,000 Italians are on the islands’ municipal registers.

Spain is not alone — and two months is still a lot

The European Commission keeps every notification of temporary internal border control in a public list. The version dated 15 September 2026 names, besides Spain, Germany, Austria, Poland, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Italy. Italy checked first, from 1 August; Spain followed on 8 August. Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi justified the Italian step on 13 August before parliament’s Schengen committee by the entry of around 72,000 third-country nationals into Ceuta on 30 and 31 July, in which Spain confirmed 83 deaths; he spoke of “controlli nei confronti dei soli cittadini di Paesi terzi (extra UE) provenienti dalla Spagna”. The Spanish order invokes the central Mediterranean route instead. Checks of this kind are not unusual in Europe right now — two months without free movement between two founding partners of the single market is.

This goes in the hand luggage, not the suitcase: a valid national identity card or passport, one per person, children included. Italian citizens should take the electronic CIE or the passport, because the paper card has not been valid for leaving the country since 3 August 2026. Third-country nationals take passport and residence permit together. And check again before flying: the measure has already been extended three times.

What happens on 7 October — and what does not: the checks lapse automatically at 24:00 that day; article 2.3 says expressly that no further decision is needed. But nothing beyond that is automatic: article 2.4 forbids automatic renewal and requires a fresh reasoned decision under articles 25 and 26 of the Schengen Borders Code for any continuation. And the extension itself publishes no reasons of its own.

FAQ

Does this also apply to my flight from the Canaries to Italy?: Not under the Spanish order, which covers only arrival from Italy. On departure the Italian side may check: it has notified its own controls until 1 October 2026.
Is my driving licence enough?: No. Your Europe expressly lists driving licences as not being travel documents; an identity card or passport is required.
What happens if I arrive without a valid document?: Entry cannot simply be refused. EU law requires the authorities first to give an EU citizen every reasonable opportunity to obtain the documents or to prove their citizenship by other means.
Should I allow extra time at the airport?: There is no official recommendation. The founding order in fact obliges the authorities to limit waiting times and to give priority to minors, families and vulnerable people.
Can the measure run beyond 7 October?: Yes, but not by itself. A new order would be needed, with an updated assessment of necessity and proportionality.

Read on

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