gTLD	Full Legal Name	E-mail suffix	Detail
.madrid	Comunidad de Madrid	madrid.org	View

The .MADRID TLD application is submitted by the Region of Madrid (Comunidad de Madrid), which is the Government of the region of Madrid region; analogous to the States in the Federal States of the USA) on behalf of, and for the Madrid community.

The following clauses (A), (B) and (C) describe the delineation of the Madrid community and corresponding policy principles of the .MADRID TLD.

(A) The Madrid community comprises individuals as citizens and legal entities with presence in the Region of Madrid. This territory comprises the 179 Municipalities, including the city of Madrid and its metropolitan area Madrid is the capital of Spain as established by art. 5 of the Spanish Constitution. A bona fide presence in the Madrid area may be determined by the following:

- residence in the Madrid area, or

- the pursuit of lawful business activities in the Madrid area, or

- the pursuit of cultural leisure, and sport activities in the Madrid area, or

- any other kind of direct or indirect presence that is generally accepted as legitimate for, and conducive to the welfare of, the Madrid area.

(B) Registration of domain names under the .MADRID TLD is restricted to members of the Madrid community and subject to the further requirement that the domain name registrant’s direct or indirect presence in the Madrid area and the registrant’s use of the domain name must be:

(1) of a kind that is generally accepted as legitimate and
(2) conducive to the welfare of the Madrid area and
(3) of commensurate quality to the role and importance of the respective domain name and
(4) based on good faith at the time of registration and thereafter.

(C) The government of the Region of Madrid, in relation to the requested .MADRID TLD, acts as the highest representative body for the Region of Madrid, as well as the representative of this community in dealings with other institutions of the Spanish state and its different administrative bodies, including the city of Madrid as state capital. In light of this, the full support of the Spanish Government has been obtained through the Secretary of State for Telecommunications, as well as for the Information Society and that of the city of Madrid, via its activities in the area of Economic Governance, Employment and Citizen Participation, with the common objective of establishing new channels for relationships based on good faith.



Answers to enumerated question points:

How the community is delineated from Internet users generally. Such descriptions may include, but are not limited to, the following: membership, registration, or licensing processes, operation in a particular industry, use of a language.

The Madrid community relates to the geographic area of the Region (Comunidad) of Madrid or the Madrid area, a described above. The Madrid area comprises the geographic urban areas of the city of Madrid. It is clearly recognizable by urban infrastructure, such as the local transport network in and around the City of Madrid. It also comprises 180 other municipalities of diverse size and character.

The delineation described under (A) above matches the reality of the Madrid community as it has existed since the advent of Madrid as a modern metropolis.

A Madrid community has existed for a long time. For as long as it has existed, those who belonged to it were those who had a bona fide presence in the urban area and its surroundings. With the advancement of civilization, new forms of presence (such as business or culture) have become generally accepted. A bona fide presence in the Madrid area may be direct or indirect, on the basis of domicile, activity, cultural links or any other constructive commitment to the Madrid area. It may be emanating from the area or be directed to the area.

Given the vast scope of a modern metropolitan community, and its surroundings, community membership always depends on context. This is why, for the purpose of domain registrations, the strength and quality of the registrant’s nexus must be commensurate to the role and importance of the domain name to the community.

In other words, a bona fide presence in the Madrid area (and thus community membership) is a necessary condition, NOT in itself a sufficient condition for the right to hold any imaginable .MADRID domain name. As the policy principles under (B) above description show, there are additional requirements specific to the intrinsic role and importance of the domain name in question. They concern in particular the nature of the registrant’s presence in the Madrid area and the registrant’s use of the domain name.

The wish to hold a .MADRID domain name is not in itself a sufficient indication of a bona fide presence in the Madrid area. Furthermore, if a person has been able to register a domain name in .MADRID, this does not in itself entitle that person to register any imaginable other .MADRID domain name.


How the community is structured and organized. For a community consisting of an alliance of groups, details about the constituent parts are required.

As any other modern metropolitan area, the Madrid community is organized to the highest degree. The Madrid area belongs to one single, highly integrated community. Because of if its importance and size, the community’s organization involves a number of public bodies and authorities on several levels (such as the Region, the Municipalities, and for the biggest among them, the Districts), treaties between public bodies, joint investments in public infrastructure companies, public-private partnerships, coordinated policies and legal frameworks that define the duties and prerogatives of each body. The public bodies are established by law and their representatives are democratically elected by universal suffrage. It goes without saying that private companies and cultural or welfare organizations also belong to the organization of the community.


When the community was established, including the date(s) of formal organization, if any, as well as a description of community activities to date.

The City of Madrid (and therefore the Greater Madrid Area) has existed as an organized community since Middle Age, having grown naturally over time. It has been the Court and then Capital of Spain since 1561.

The activities of the Madrid community are:
- the shared concerns and pursuits of the residents and stakeholders of the Madrid area (along with their organizations or public bodies)
- the shared use of the infrastructure and services of the Madrid area, such as transport, telecommunications, as well as culture, education, welfare and leisure,
- a strong focus for tourism, including leading role in cultural tourism (Madrid is the seat, for instance, of the World Tourism Organization).
- the role of the City of Madrid as capital of Spain.

The Madrid community includes extensive activities in the digital world specific to the Greater Madrid Community, both in the form of e-government services and public authorities’ contributions to the development of information society. The .MADRID TLD is designed to be directly related to the activities of the Madrid community, including fostering the use of electronic administration and promoting political and social participation.


The current estimated size of the community, both as to membership and geographic extent.

The population of the Madrid area is in the order of 7 million inhabitants. The geographic extension of the Madrid Region is at 8.021 square kilometers.

The Madrid Region comprises, beyond the City of Madrid, 179 Municipalities that can be found on www.madrid.org

gTLD	Full Legal Name	E-mail suffix	Detail
.gal	Asociación puntoGAL	puntogal.org	View

The .gal TLD will serve the needs of the Galician linguistic and cultural community on the Internet. The community consists of those who use (or commit to use) the Galician language for their online communications, and⁄or promote the different aspects of Galician culture online, and⁄or intend to specifically address their online communications and services to that community.

Registrations under the .gal TLD are restricted to bona-fide members of the Galician linguistic and cultural community, and subject to the further requirement that the registrant’s actions in the the .gal TLD community, as well as the registrant’s use of the registered domain name, must be:

(i)generally accepted as legitimate; and
(i)beneficial to the cause and the values of the Galician linguistic and cultural community; and
(i)commensurate with the role and importance of the registered domain name; and
(iv)in good faith at the time of registration and thereafter.

The Galician language is recognized as the autochthonous language in the area where it originated, and the Galician government has the right and obligation to use and promote it at all levels. Galician is established in all the educational levels. In addition, the administration promotes the language in the areas outside Galicia where people speak Galician and among the diaspora.

According to official data from Observatorio da Lingua Galega (a public body that researches in linguistics), Galician is spoken by more than 98% of the inhabitants of the territories where Galician is official.

Asociación puntoGAL has a clear and strong endorsement from the most relevant Institutions related to the Galician linguistic and cultural community. This also includes relevant business and professional associations, representing interests from every sector. The representativity of these institutions invests PuntoGAL with a clear mandate to serve a linguistic and cultural community of approximately four million people in different territories, and whose size ranks in position 136th among the more than 6,000 languages of the globe.

Many among the biggest Information Technologies companies are aware of the economical significance of Galician for their products. Google is currently available in 118 languages, and Galician is one of them. OS Windows can run in 95 languages, and Galician is available. Facebook only works with 70 languages and among them is Galician. On Twitter, Galician ranks 22nd in the list of languages used and first among languages that are official in only part of a state. Almost everyrelevant free software initiative (Mozzilla, OpenOffice, etc.) has its own Galician translation, completed by an active network of volunteers who work for the normalization of Galician in the software industry.

Volunteers also feed the Galipedia, the Galician Wikipedia. Galipedia ranks 41th in number of entries. Galipedia has more than 39.000 articles.
Besides language, the Galician culture has an ancient legacy with unique characteristics. The Way of St. James one of the oldest pilgrimage routes across Europe that finish in the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela; music which is similar to the musical traditions of Ireland, Scotland and other Atlantic European territories; ancient traditions like Galician carnival, literature medieval Galician lyric poetry had a special cultural role during the Middle Ages in the whole Iberian Peninsula; and cuisine –famous for the quality of its shellfish and seafood are just a few of the most internationally know examples of Galician cultural landmarks.

Answers to enumerated question points:

•How the community is delineated from Internet users generally.

The objective of the .gal TLD being to serve the Galician linguistic and cultural community, and to contribute to the promotion of the Galician information society sphere, the community is defined by those Internet content creators and end users using online communications in Galician or related to the Galician culture. The article 2 of Asociación puntoGAL’s bylaws enshrines this Mandate by establishing that “entities, companies or people that use the Galician language and⁄or promote the Galician culture may register a .gal domain name”

•How the community is structured and organized.

Asociación puntoGAL has been established for the purpose of creating and managing the .gal TLD. To that purpose, it created an structure that represents a wide array of Institutions from every area of the Galician society, and gathered the support of the most relevant Institutions related to the Galician cultural, technologic, media, professional and Civil Society sectors. PuntoGAL therefore, represents a community established centuries ago, with a longstanding existence and consolidated cultural heritage, organized throughout the centuries in many different layers of political, administrative, commercial, cultural and social organizations, that exceed by far the scope of this question.

•When the community was established, including the date(s) of formal organization, if any, as well as a description of community activities to date.

Due its nature, there is no date of formal organization of the community. However, the Galician language belongs to the family of Romance languages -like French or Spanish- and is the result of the evolution of Latin, which was introduced by the Romans in the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula. The Romans named Gallaecia the north-west of the Iberian Peninsula and the first references about the Gallaeci people were written by Latin and Greek authors in chronicles written during the first century AD. From the 9th century onwards, the language spoken in the area of the Kingdom of Galicia (founded around 409) was so different from Latin that the existence of two languages could be considered: Latin and Galician.

There are many areas with a large concentration of Galicians and Galiciansʹ descendants all around the world. These emigrants preserved their language as a communication vehicle -not only in the private field but also in the public field- through periodicals, literary publications or even in radio stations. There are large Galician-speaking communities in plenty of the main cities of Spain (Barcelona, Madrid, etc.), the rest of Europe (Zurich, Lisboa, etc. ) and America (Montevideo, Buenos Aires, etc). One of the main aims of the .gal TLD is to serve as a link between these diaspora communities. In fact, among the more than 100 members of Asociación puntoGAL there are twenty associations of Galician diaspora. There are members form two continents and ten countries.

Researchers of Galician also participate in this community. Currently, there are 43 centers of Galician studies located at several universities in Europe, America and the Australian Continent.

•The current estimated size of the community, both as to membership and geographic extent

Four million people approximately form this community. Almost three million of them live inside Galicia, in the North West of the Iberian Peninsula. The Spanish Constitution states that Galicia is an autonomous community and a historic region. In addition, Galician language and Galician culture have a relevant presence in other autonomous communities of Spain. Galician emigrant populations in France (15,798), United Kingdom (10,358), Germany (13,076), Switzerland (29,772), United States of America (11,549), Mexico (9,100), Cuba (24,546), Argentina (135,741), Brazil (34,700), Uruguay (33,739), Venezuela (36,586) and Australia (841) are relevant. It is important to bear in mind that these data only include people living abroad and who are registered in the official census. The total amount of Galician descendants of different generations and their relatives living abroad multiplies by six or five the number of Galician registered in the official census