The ".es" domain statistics for 2021 confirm that at the end of 2021 the milestone of 2 million is closer, standing at 1,979,796 ".es" registrations as of 31 December.
This country code for Internet is managed in Spain by Red.es, the public agency the which reports to the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation, in collaboration with more than 100 Accredited Registrars that offer ".es" domains to individuals and companies, together with other value-added services.
The ".es" are the majority, with a total of 1,896,405, followed by ".com.es" (71,064), ".nom.es" (7,504), ".org.es" (3,231), ".gob.es" (1,107) and ".edu.es" (485). The latter two are used exclusively by government entities and educational institutions, respectively.
Compared to 2020, when they stood at 1,966,673 registrations, ".es" domains have grown by 0.6% in the last year, leaving the 2 million milestone at 20,200 new registrations.
Beyond our borders, Germany leads the list of foreign countries with the most registered ".es" domains with 46,668, closely followed by the United States with 42,939. The United Kingdom and France accumulate 28,518 and 24,164 registrations respectively, to which must be added the 155,877 that are distributed throughout the rest of the world.
As with the evolution of the ".es" domains, the number of Accredited Registrars has also grown significantly, reaching 107 by the end of 2021, compared to the first 10 in 2003. At present, more than 99.5% of the ".es" domains are managed through these companies approved by Red.es.
The Accredited Registrars collaborate with the registry in the management, support and dissemination of ".es", as well as offering value-added services to users (web, e-mail, brands, etc.). Their accreditation by Red.es involves the payment of an initial fee, compliance with certain technical and economic requirements, as well as the signing of a contract.
With the milestone of 2 million ".es" domains on the horizon, Spain maintains its status among the top twenty countries with territorial top-level domains on a global scale by number of registrations.
Spain, through Dominios.es, is represented in CENTR, the European association of top-level registries whose main functions are to act as a platform for the exchange of experiences, to promote projects of common interest and to represent its members before the main organisations in the sector.
In addition, ".es" domains offer companies and Internet users greater legal security as they are subject to Spanish legislation and the jurisdiction of the national courts, thus avoiding abusive or speculative registrations.
Evolution of ".es" domain names:
-1989: After ICANN granted Spain the geographic top-level domain (ccTLD) ".es", its operation during the first years was assigned to RedIRIS, the National research and education network.
-1990: The first domain is awarded to nic.es in reference to the acronym for Network Information Center.
-2000: The management of the ".es" domains is transferred to the public entity Retevisión (later transformed into Red.es).
-2003: 1st partial liberalisation with the entry of the first Accredited Registrars and the opening of 3rd level ".es" domains.
-2005: 2nd liberalisation of the registration rules for 2nd level ".es" domains and a boom in the number of registrations.
-2007: Inclusion in the registration of ".es" domains of all existing multilingual characters in both Spanish and the other co-official languages.
-2008: One million ".es" domains.
-2009: Celebration of the 20th Anniversary of Dominios.es at FICOD.
-2010: Implementation of procedures applicable to the assignment and other operations associated with the registration of domain names under the ".es" domain.
-2014: Celebration of the 25th Anniversary of Dominios.es and launch of the DNSSEC security protocol.
-2018: Implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
-2019: 30th anniversary of ICANN granting Spain the geographic top-level domain (ccTLD) ".es"
-2019/2021 Collaboration agreement with the National Institute of Cybersecurity