@Tom: I’m clearly doing something wrong if you agree on anything Government’s duty is to provide us with decent services in return for our taxes, not to serve one particular linguistic community to the apparent exclusion of the rest (I haven’t noticed a move to introduce bcn.cas for Spanish speakers or bcn.eng for us). Since Barcelona is still subordinated in an administrative sense to Spain, the simplest and most intelligent thing would surely be for it to remain an .es. What El País does doesn’t concern me because I’m not obliged to buy their product, and if they see themselves as a global medium, then good luck to them. No one, however, makes bigger fools of themselves than Girona council, which claims to be something to do with Gibraltar: http://www.ajuntament.gi/ Someone kick their arses, please.

“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.”

So logically, they can have the .cat domain and not promote Catalan culture. Whether or not this change is an example of pretty pathetic politicking… on that, I agree with you. I guess you saw the move from elpais.es to elpais.com too…