Border controls between Italy and Spain
The new border controls imposed between Italy and Spain will not have a particularly serious impact on the Canary Islands, beyond the inevitable inconvenience of queues which, at airports such as Tenerife-South, will compound existing issues that have been affecting security checks for some time. At present, there are 37 direct air routes operating between the Canary Islands and Italy, with a weekly frequency of 73 flights.
Italian tourism figures
However, Italy is not the leading source of tourists visiting the Canary Islands. According to the Canary Islands Institute of Statistics (Istac), 834,108 tourists from Italy visited the Archipelago in 2025, out of a total of around 18 million visitors recorded. Yet the Italian community is the largest group of foreign residents in the Canary Islands, after Spanish nationals.
Italians are drawn to the Canaries by the climate and the low tax burden, and there are now around 60,000 of them living here. From now on, until this reciprocal measure is lifted, their travel between their country of residence and their homeland will become somewhat more cumbersome than before.
Where Italians choose to live
Sources familiar with the Italian community in the Canary Islands confirmed to this newspaper on Saturday that their numbers continue to grow. Tenerife is the preferred island for this nationality, although the municipality with the highest percentage of Italians is La Oliva in Fuerteventura – more specifically the tourist area of Corralejo – just ahead of Adeje and Arona.
It is in the latter municipality, in the south of Tenerife, specifically in Playa de las Américas, that the Italian Vice-Consulate is located. It operates a telephone service from Monday to Thursday between 2pm and 4pm, which makes it impossible at this early stage to gauge the impact of the measure on its users. In the province of Las Palmas, there is only one consular agency – the lowest-ranking representation in Italy’s diplomatic organisation.
The Italian community at a glance
Of the ten Spanish municipalities with more than 1,000 inhabitants with the highest percentage of Italians, eight are in the Canary Islands. La Oliva (16.88%), Adeje (10.99%), Antigua (9.77%) and Arona (8.64%) top the list, which gives a clear indication of the weight of this community.
In the municipality with the greatest ethnic diversity in the Archipelago – Vecindario (Santa Lucía de Tirajana), in the south-west of Gran Canaria – the largest nationality after Spanish is Italian, followed by Moroccan.
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