DeCA: practical guide and checklist before 5 October

An inspector pulls your driver over in an industrial park and asks for the transport control document. Your driver opens the glovebox, pulls out a stack of folded papers and starts digging. From 5 October 2026, that scene ends in a fine, even if the paperwork is filled in perfectly.

That is the day Spain's administrative control document becomes electronic only. It is called the DeCA, and it is no longer a distant announcement: the technical rules were published in the official state gazette in June 2026, so you already know exactly what will be asked of you. What is left is time to prepare, and there is not much of it.

Here is what changes, who is responsible for what, and a checklist to get there without a scramble.

What the DeCA is and what changes on 5 October

The control document has travelled with every public road freight service in Spain for decades. What changes is not the document itself, it is the format: paper stops existing.

The date comes from the eighth transitional provision of Law 9/2025 on Sustainable Mobility, which gave ten months from the day it took effect. The technical detail sits in the Resolution of 5 June 2026 from the Directorate-General for Road and Rail Transport. The minimum content is still the one set out in article 6 of Order FOM/2861/2012, exactly as before.

Two things worth being clear about now:

• Scanning paper does not count. The file has to be born digital.
• There will be no extra grace period without penalties after 5 October.

Who has to comply

It applies to you if you run public road freight transport with origin and destination in Spain, and to cabotage operations too.

International transport is out of scope, since it is governed by the CMR convention. So is own-account transport and any operation that does not require a transport authorisation. The long-standing exclusions still hold, such as removals or parcels a single person can handle.

The technical requirements, in operations language

The June resolution is specific. Translated into what your team will actually see:

• Native PDF, 5 MB maximum. Generated from structured data, not from a scanner.
• A QR code with a unique URL. The QR goes inside the PDF and must also be available as a separate file, so it can be shown on its own.
• A URL that downloads without credentials. It starts with https, uses TLS 1.2 or higher, and serves the PDF directly. No logins, no intermediate buttons.
• Available throughout the service. You can switch the link off seven calendar days after the service ends.
• Date and time metadata for creation and for any modification.
• Issued before the service actually starts. Not halfway through the route.
• Archived for at least one year, in your own repository or your provider's.

On the road, your driver can show the PDF or just the QR code. And here is the change your day-to-day will feel most: handwritten notes on a printed copy are no longer valid. If something changes, the document changes.

What to do when something changes mid-route

It happens every day: a delivery drops out, another comes in, a vehicle has to be swapped. The rules give you two paths.

1. Modify the same PDF. You keep the URL and the QR your driver already has, and the change is recorded.
2. Generate a new PDF. New URL and new QR, keeping the original for traceability.

Either way, the driver has to receive the updated version before anyone stops them. That is the critical point: fixing the document back at the office is not enough.

Grouping services and reusing documents you already issue

You can put several services into a single DeCA as long as the contractual shipper and the actual carrier are the same across all of them.

And if you already issue other digital documents, check what they contain before building anything new. The consignment note, including the eCMR, plus the ADR document, the waste identification document and the SANDACH certificate can all act as a DeCA if they carry the required content. For how the eCMR fits into all this, see our 2026 digital control document guide.

Who is responsible for what

The DeCA is not the carrier's problem alone. Responsibility is shared, and each party answers for its own data:

• The contractual shipper: its own identification, the type, nature and weight of the goods, and the places of origin and destination.
• The actual carrier: its identification and authorisation, the vehicle registration, the driver's identification, and carrying and showing the document.

Both share responsibility for the document existing before the service starts. If you work with subcontractors, that conversation with your shippers and partners belongs now, not on 4 October.

Checklist: what to have sorted before 5 October

1. Take stock of your services. Which ones are domestic public transport or cabotage? Those are the ones that need a DeCA.
2. Check where every data point comes from. Shipper, goods, weight, origin, destination, plate, driver. If any of them lives in a spreadsheet or in someone's head, that is your work.
3. Decide who issues it. Your delivery software, your eCMR provider or your ERP. Get written confirmation that it meets the June rules: native PDF, QR, URL with no credentials.
4. Test the QR for real. Scan it from any phone, on mobile data, off your own network. If it asks for a password, it does not comply.
5. Close the loop on mid-route changes. Who reissues, how the new version reaches the driver, and what the driver does meanwhile.
6. Set up the archive. One year of retention, and the ability to find one specific document in minutes rather than in an afternoon.
7. Talk to your drivers. Showing a QR has to be faster than digging through the glovebox. If it is slower, they will go back to paper.
8. Pilot one route. One week, one driver, the whole flow end to end. You fix things against something real, at low risk.

How Routal helps you stay on top of it

The DeCA is not a document problem. It is a data problem: the information has to be complete and correct before the van leaves, and the document has to follow the driver as the day moves.

That is exactly what Routal already does with your routes:

• The data is where it needs to be, in time. When you plan in Routal, every service leaves with its shipper, its goods, its origin and destination, and its vehicle and driver assigned. That is the same information the DeCA asks for, ready before the service starts.
• Changes do not stay in the office. Reassign a stop or swap a vehicle and you know immediately which service changed and which document has to be reissued. Your driver gets the updated route in the driver app, with offline mode for dead zones.
• Proof of what happened, without arguments. Time, photo, signature and location at every stop. When someone asks nine months later, the proof of delivery is one click away and matches what the document said.
• Connected to your systems. Our API and the integrations with your ERP or TMS carry route data to whoever issues the document, with nobody retyping anything.

Digitising the control document is the visible part. What actually saves you fines is clean data and the same document in your driver's hands and in your archive. If you want the concrete plan for leaving paper behind, here it is: digitising the delivery note step by step.

There are only a few weeks left. Start with one route.