Three levels, three figures

Since the 2025 base the INE splits spending into 13 groups, 45 subgroups and 196 subclasses, and keeps 55 rúbricas alongside them. The 19.3 percent belongs to the subgroup "Utilización de vehículos personales" (table 76137): fuel, servicing, spare parts, tolls, parking — running the car, not buying it. The rúbrica "Transporte personal" (table 76138) counts the purchase too and so reaches only +13.0 percent. At group level +8.2 percent is left, below Spain's 9.5.

On vehicle use the Canaries rank fourth of 19 territories, behind Ceuta (22.7), Melilla (20.4) and Madrid (19.6); on the rúbrica they rank third, level with Galicia. Nineteen, not seventeen: Ceuta and Melilla are carried in these tables. The INE press release calls the Canaries the community with the lowest inflation (3.8 percent) — it compares only 17.

Where the fall comes from: air fares

The INE publishes subclasses for Spain as a whole only. There the picture is unambiguous: domestic flights −16.4 percent year on year, international flights −15.3, sea −4.7, rail −9.3 — while bus and coach fares rose 2.6 percent. It is flights. And the Canaries depend on them more: the rúbrica "Transporte público interurbano" weighs 26.345 of 1,000 weighting units in the 2026 Canarian basket, against only 13.259 in the Spanish one.

Add a base effect. The Canarian rúbrica stood at 113.067 points in August 2025 and 98.336 in August 2026. August 2025 was itself an outlier on the way up (+10.3 percent). And in August 2026 the index fell 2.4 percent against July — in a month that normally rises.

What it was not — and what stays open

Not the free island buses. The Council of Ministers renewed the funding unchanged on 23 December 2025 for all of 2026 — for "guaguas urbanas e interurbanas y el tranvía", part of a 1.371 billion euro package. It applied in August 2025 just the same; an unchanged measure produces no year-on-year change. The Canarian index for urban transport bears that out: +0.3 percent against +2.4 in Spain. Nor was it demand: Aena counted only 0.8 percent more passengers.

Why the airlines cut their fares appears in no publication we were able to check. Extra seats are a plausible candidate, but Aena reports passengers and aircraft movements, not seats per route.

Also open is whether the 75 percent resident discount is inside the index at all. The Ministerio de Transportes y Movilidad Sostenible describes it as a reduction "sobre precio de la tarifa", applied after any airline promotion and excluding airport charges — so a lower base fare also cuts what is left to pay. The INE methodology says only general things: air fares are collected centrally, and discounts enter only where all consumers can use them or the eligible share of the population is known. How the INE applies that is not published — it could be a large part of the explanation.

What a commuter pays — and what arrives on 1 October

The Dirección General de Energía publishes monthly averages for Canarian forecourts: in August 2026, 144.3 cents a litre for petrol 95 and 153.8 cents for diesel, against 113.8 and 112.4 a year earlier. Our calculation: 40 kilometres a day over 20 working days is 800 kilometres, and at 6 litres per 100 kilometres that is 48 litres a month. On diesel about 73.80 euros against 53.95 euros a year before — just under 20 euros more, around 240 euros a year. The same journey by island bus costs nothing in 2026, and for that very reason does not show up as a price fall in the index.

The trigger for the zero IGIC rate — the Canarian fuel index must sit more than 15 percent above the same month a year earlier — is still met: +28.7 percent in August, against 21.3 in Spain. That does not change the end date in the law. One percentage point on 154 cents of diesel would, by our calculation, be a little over one and a half cents a litre, about 75 cents on 48 litres a month.