A new resolution published in Spain's official gazette this week lays out exactly how electronic administrative control documents must work. With an October 2026 deadline looming, carriers and shippers have little time to act.

Spain's Ministry of Transport and Sustainable Mobility made it official last week. The Resolution of 5 June 2026 (BOE-A-2026-12784), published in the Boletín Oficial del Estado on 12 June, sets out the precise technical standards that all electronic administrative control documents (known as DeCA) must meet for road transport operations on Spanish territory. It replaces the earlier resolution of May 2023 and arrives as a direct follow-on from last December's Sustainable Mobility Act, which mandated the end of paper documents entirely.

For anyone moving freight by road in Spain, the message is clear: paper is out, and digital is no longer optional.

The deadline: Spain's Sustainable Mobility Act (Ley 9/2025, of 3 December 2025) requires that administrative control documents for both road freight and passenger transport be digital within ten months of the law taking effect - putting the hard cut-off in October 2026.

 

What the new rules require?

The resolution is unusually specific, and that specificity is deliberate. Spanish authorities want to ensure that digital documents are genuinely tamper-proof and instantly accessible to roadside inspectors - not just PDFs attached to an email. Here are the five pillars every compliant system must meet:

  • Native PDF only

Max 5 MB. No scanned paper. Must be generated digitally from structured data.

  • Embedded QR code

Every PDF must contain a QR linking directly to the stored document URL.

  • Secure, direct URL

HTTPS (TLS 1.2+), unique per document. No login screens, no download buttons.

  • Live repository

Documents stored and accessible to inspectors for the full duration of the journey.

  • 12-month retention

 

Both the contractual shipper and the performing carrier must retain files for at least one year.

The inspection flow is worth understanding in detail. When a roadside inspector stops a vehicle, the driver presents either the DeCA on their phone or a printed copy. Both must show the QR code. The inspector scans it, triggering a direct PDF download. No authentication, no redirects, no manual steps. If the link requires a login or routes to a landing page, the document is non-compliant. The operator may deactivate the URL seven days after the service ends; until then, availability is non-negotiable.

Mid-journey changes and multi-shipment documents

The resolution also addresses practical realities. When data needs updating during a journey - a changed destination, additional cargo - operators can either amend the existing PDF (keeping the same QR code) or generate a new one with a new URL, in which case the driver must receive the updated file immediately and the original must be retained for traceability. Handwritten notes on printed copies carry no legal weight.

Where the contractual shipper and performing carrier are the same across multiple shipments, several loads can be bundled into a single DeCA. Each shipment's origin, destination, and cargo details must be clearly distinguished within the document, but the listed order does not imply a mandatory delivery sequence.

 

What this means for international companies operating in Spain?
A compliance obligation that crosses borders

The scope of Spain's new rules is broader than many international operators realise. The obligation applies to all domestic road transport, including cabotage operations carried out by foreign carriers on Spanish territory. A German, French, or Polish haulier running a load entirely within Spain must comply with the DeCA requirements exactly as a Spanish carrier would.

International journeys that merely pass through Spain - with origin and destination outside the country - fall under international conventions (such as the CMR) and are out of scope. But any leg of a journey that constitutes a standalone domestic service within Spain triggers the full DeCA obligation.

For European logistics groups and fleet operators managing cross-border networks, this adds Spain to a growing list of countries with country-specific digital document mandates. The good news is that Spain explicitly recognises eFTI-compliant systems (EU Regulation 2020/1056) and existing transport document formats, including the international CMR consignment note, as valid DeCA formats, provided all required data fields are present and the contractual shipper and performing carrier are clearly identified. That means companies already operating digitally across Europe are closer to compliance than they might think, but they still need to verify field-by-field alignment and ensure their documents are stored at inspector-accessible URLs.

Where TransFollow comes in

This is precisely the kind of regulatory shift TransFollow was built for. TransFollow's digital consignment note already captures all mandatory data fields required under Order FOM/2861/2012 — the Spanish freight regulation that defines what a DeCA must contain. That means carriers and shippers using TransFollow can use the same document for both contractual and DeCA compliance purposes, eliminating duplication and avoiding the cost of building parallel systems.

How TransFollow maps to Spain's DeCA requirements: TransFollow generates native digital PDFs from structured transport data, stores documents at secure HTTPS URLs, supports QR code embedding for roadside inspection, and maintains document history for traceability, including mid-journey amendments. Retention and multi-shipment grouping are handled within the platform.

For international operators already using TransFollow across their European network, extending DeCA compliance for Spanish operations requires no new system - just a configuration check to confirm that the Spanish-specific fields are populated and that documents are accessible via the platform's existing inspector-ready URLs.

For companies that haven't yet made the move to digital transport documentation, Spain's October 2026 deadline is a forcing function. The question is no longer whether to digitalise, but which platform to do it on  and whether that platform can serve you beyond Spain as more countries follow suit.

 

What to do before October 2026?

1. Audit your document workflow

Identify any remaining paper or scanned-image processes for Spanish domestic and cabotage operations.

2. Check your data fields

Cross-reference your current transport documents against the mandatory fields in Order FOM/2861/2012. Pay particular attention to how your system identifies the contractual shipper and performing carrier separately.

3. Verify URL accessibility

Ensure every document your system generates is stored at a direct-download HTTPS URL — no authentication walls, no intermediary pages.

4. Confirm retention policy

Both the shipper and carrier must be able to access documents for 12 months. Review whether your current setup covers both parties.

5. Talk to TransFollow

If you're not yet on a platform that handles all of the above out of the box, now is the time to move.

 

Ready to get compliant before the deadline?

TransFollow supports DeCA-compliant digital transport documents out of the box for Spain and across Europe.