20 YEARS AGO
WE MADE HISTORY

On 23 April 2006, the .cat domain was opened to the public. That Sant Jordi's Day, as every year, people were buying roses and books. And on the Internet —that Internet of 2006 where YouTube was just one year old, Facebook was only for Mark Zuckerberg's university friends, and where Instagram, TikTok, Spotify and OpenAI were words we had never heard—, the Catalan-speaking community had just achieved what no one had done before: a domain of their own, internationally recognised, for a culture and a language without a state.

What if it had all been a dream?

What would the Internet be like without .cat?

Let us imagine for a moment that this historic milestone had never happened. If in 2004, none of the 65,468 people, 2,615 companies and 98 entities and associations that made it possible to put forward the .cat candidacy before ICANN (the international body that regulates Internet domains) had organised themselves to claim a domain of their own for our language and culture. The Internet would have continued on its course, and Catalan might still not have found its own corner on the web.

Perhaps today, when you went online and searched for a local business, a cultural project or a Catalan-language initiative on the web, you would find only generic domains, just like any other Internet address.

Perhaps today, when you searched on your trusted browser, none of the more than 117,000 domains that generate content in our language and culture would appear.

Perhaps today you would not feel free enough to live fully as who you are on the web, without having to give up your language or your culture.

Fortunately, things did not go that way.

The story of .cat has served as inspiration and guidance for many other communities in the same situation as ours.

What could have remained just a dream has ended up becoming a legacy full of recognition, including such special awards as the Premi d'Honor Lluís Carulla (2010) and the Creu de Sant Jordi (2018), among many others.

20 years later, here we are

Today on the Internet there are more than 117,000 active .cat domains, almost nine out of ten people renew their domain year after year, and 69 registrars, both national and international, offer .cat domains worldwide.

Those who are part of the .cat community know that their domain is much more than a name on the Internet.

Because behind every .cat there is a project that needs to be seen. An organisation that fights for a cause and should not have to worry about the cost of being online. A business that wants to find its place in a market of more than ten million consumers who speak the same language. A teacher who today teaches students to continue building the .cat legacy.

For them, and for the rest of Catalan speakers on the web, Accent Obert, the managing entity of the .cat domain, drives an ecosystem of projects thanks to the funding from each .cat domain, making it possible for Catalan to exist, grow and be useful on the web.

Perhaps today, when you went online and searched for a local business, a cultural project or a Catalan-language initiative on the web, you would find only generic domains, just like any other Internet address.

Perhaps today, when you searched on your trusted browser, none of the more than 117,000 domains that generate content in our language and culture would appear.

Perhaps today you would not feel free enough to live fully as who you are on the web, without having to give up your language or your culture.

Fortunately, things did not go that way.

The story of .cat has served as inspiration and guidance for many other communities in the same situation as ours.

What could have remained just a dream has ended up becoming a legacy full of recognition, including such special awards as the Premi d'Honor Lluís Carulla (2010) and the Creu de Sant Jordi (2018), among many others.

The role of .cat in the age of AI

Artificial intelligence has already changed the way we search for information, how algorithms find it and how models decide which content is relevant.

In this new scenario, having a digital ecosystem of our own in Catalan is one of the best guarantees that our language will continue to be useful and visible.

For this reason, the .cat domain leads an international project funded by ICANN Grants that, over two years and with the participation of eleven geoterritorial domains, analyses how search engines —both traditional and AI-powered— treat domains that represent cultural and linguistic identities on the web. The aim: to strengthen the visibility of Catalan and defend linguistic diversity as one of the fundamental pillars of the Internet.

Shall we keep writing the history of .cat together?

And now? The story is written by your domain.

Having a domain with 20 years of history says a lot about the people behind it.

The brave ones who decided to join forces to make it happen, those who have helped it grow and be recognised by the world, and those who, every day, trust what they are and what represents them to .cat.

The best is yet to come!

Thank you for being part of the .cat community.