A few weeks back, the domains of .barcelona, .cat, .gal and .eus had a meeting with our registration companies to explain our projects to them, but also to exchange opinions and experiences and develop a closer relationship with them.

All four domains form part of the geoTLD.group. an international non-profit association representing the interests of top-level geographical domains that identify a city, a region, a language or a culture.

The .cat domain appeared in 2005 and was the first domain in the world to represent a language or a culture. Its appearance was possible thanks to a successful campaign and mobilisation which strengthened the Catalan-speaking civil society. Since then, the domain has been managed by the Fundació .cat and its regulations explain that its use is for websites with content in Catalan, regardless of whether they contain content in other languages or not.

The creation of the .cat domain provided the model for the approval of the .eus domain in 2008, representing Basque language and culture. This domain is managed by the PuntuEus foundation.

Five years later, in 2013, the ICANN approved a new domain representing one of the languages and cultures in the Spanish state. In this case, .gal is the domain for Galician language and culture and is managed by PuntoGal.

The .barcelona domain came into service in 2016 and was the first city domain in the Spanish state, managed by Barcelona City Council. Nearly four thousand domains were registered when it was launched, and now any individual, company or organisation identifying with the city’s values can register.

Besides identifying users with a local or linguistic community, all of these domains are managed by organisations which devote part of their income to projects that promote digitalisation in their regions.