20 years of Catalan culture online: .cat domain celebrates anniversary

The .cat domain celebrated its 20th anniversary Wednesday at the Barcelona Maritime Museum. The event served to highlight the domain's journey since its creation and, at the same time, address the challenges posed by the digital era. 

Approved in 2005, .cat was the first internet domain linked to a linguistic and cultural community and, twenty years later, exceeds over 118,000 active registrations. 

The celebration brought together representatives of institutions including the Catalan government, FC Barcelona, the Catalan Media Corporation (CCMA), the Institute for Catalan Studies and Viquipèdia, the Catalan-language Wikipedia.

The president of Accent Obert (formerly Fundació puntCat), Genís Roca, noted that through .cat, institutions and people became a part of a community, and argued that the domain contributed to "making it normal to be Catalan on the internet."

He also highlighted that artificial intelligence and large digital platforms pose big challenges to the domain and that there is "a lot of work to do." 

Roca stated that the current challenge is no longer just to guarantee the presence of Catalan on websites, but to ensure that Catalan culture is present in new digital infrastructures.

The celebration also brought together hundreds of users of the .cat domain from different generations. Àngel Arcarons, owner of one of the first .cat domains, explained that his family chose the extension because it linked him to their "culture and country."

Judit and Carles Núñez, creators of PintarGegants.cat, are one of the most recent owners of the domain. The project was born out of their son's interest in giants and consists of coloring pages of figures from Catalan popular culture. The creators were shocked to discover that .cat is only 20 years old and praised the pioneering nature of the initiative and the fact that the project remains "so alive."