History Before .cat was available, and given the reluctance of certain Spanish institutions, companies, and people to use .es, .fr, .it or .ad domains for their webpages, alternatives emerged. An example of this is the website for the city of Girona in Catalonia, which uses a .gi domain ("http://www.ajuntament.gi/", the word "ajuntament" meaning both "city council" and "town hall"), even though .gi is the country code for Gibraltar.
To solve this problem, in September 2005 the .cat TLD was approved for all webpages, etc., intending to serve the needs of the Catalan linguistic and cultural community on the Internet. This community is made up of those who use the Catalan language for their online communications, and/or promote the different aspects of Catalan culture online. The initial registration period went from February 13th, 2006, to April 21st, 2006. The registry was open to everybody starting April 23rd, 2006.
Restrictions The .cat domain is not territorial, but applies to the whole Catalan-speaking community, whether or not a site is based in Catalonia. In order to be granted a .cat domain, one needs to belong to the Catalan linguistic and cultural community on the Internet. A person, organization or company is considered to belong if they:
Домен отражает интересы каталонского лингвистического и культурного сообщества в Интернете. В сообщество входят люди, которые используют каталонский язык для онлайн-коммуникаций, а также те, кто продвигает различные аспекты каталонской культуры. Каталонский язык является, наряду с испанским, официальным языком страны и широко распространен в некоторых регионах Испании.