Catalan government opens new referendum website after original is shut down by Spain

The official website of the independence referendum to be held on October 1 (referendum.cat) stopped working on Wednesday afternoon, after the Spanish police delivered a judicial order to the web domain company ordering its closure. Immediately afterwards, the Catalan government launched two new websites with the same content (ref1oct.eu and ref1oct.cat).

“The world of electronic communications does not have borders,” Catalan president, Carles Puigdemont, said on Wednesday in an interview with Catalan Public Television. “They can shut down one website. But if you know in advance this might happen, you automatically launch a new one.”

The new website has been registered by EuroDNS, a company based in Luxembourg. This could make it harder for the Spanish government to shut it down. The original one was based in Catalonia.