.gal

a new top-level domain

Applicant

• Contact
• Email
• Facebook
• Twitter

For the more than four million Galician-speaking individuals worldwide who share a common language and culture, a unique brand is needed to identify the web content created that is related to their way of life.

The .gal top-level domain is the ending that should belong to the Galician community, a group of people with strong linguistic, cultural, historical and social links. A suffix to identify web pages written in Galician and given their geographic dispersion, would not be restricted to any particular territory. The proposal, technically executable and socially, linguistically and culturally profitable, lies within the top-level sponsored domains.

Mission

The proposal for .gal in no way invalidates a geographic domain with two letters (.gz, for example). Only states recognized by the United Nations or one of its agencies are allowed to have access to these.

The creation of .cat (signifying the Catalan language) in 2005, the first and yet the only cultural domain in the world recognized by ICANN, opened a window for the aspirations of .gal and other similar initiatives (.eus, .cym, bzh). Three years after the "Fundació puntCat", which is the not-for profit organization responsible for managing the .cat domain, was created, today there are more than 36,000 .cat domains registered.

But, in order to realize the .cat top-level domain, it was essential to inform members of society, business and the Catalan authorities. Cultural associations, foundations, companies, sports entities and people from all walks of life joined together with a single voice in a project guaranteed to be considered significant by the institutions.