The application of electrochemical impedance spec- troscopy (EIS) to characterize the corrosion products layer of aluminium alloys has many advantages. The re- sults obtained up until now show that EIS is a powerful tool able to provide important information concerning the electrochemical properties and corrosion resistance of aluminium alloys [4,5,16,17].The scanning reference electrode technique (SRET) also has remarkable advantages over traditional electro- chemical techniques in that it provides spatially resolved electrochemical information with no perturbation of the sample [18–22]. In this paper we describe the use of EIS and SRET in the study of the electrochemical behaviour of the Al–12.6 wt.%La alloy when it is anodically polar- ized in distilled water.