The University of Oviedo has been awarded as a pioneer of the ".es" domain. The Rector, Vicente Gotor, received the award yesterday in Madrid during a ceremony offered to one hundred universities, public institutions and enterprises coming from all the Autonomous Communities for being pioneers in the registration of Internet domains under the TLD ".es", typical of our country and mostly used in Spain.

The act was presided over by the Minister of Industry, Energy and Tourism, José Manuel Soria, and also featured the presence of the Secretary of State for Telecommunications and Information Society, Víctor Calvo Sotelo, and the General Director of Red.es, César Miralles. Professor Francisco Sánchez Martínez, Founding Director of the Institute of Astrophysics of Canarias, offered a speech in lieu of the winners of the award.

The University of Oviedo was the sixth institution that registered a ".es" Internet domain (uniovi.es) and it has been the only Asturian institution that received this award by the Ministry of Industry. The public entity Red.es has analyzed the first 200 ".es" domains that were registered. Only 116 of them are still active online under the ".es" domain.

All of the Autonomous Communities were represented, though the majority of domains came from Madrid (52). The rest come from Catalunya (18), Andalucía (11), Euskadi (7), Galicia (6), Valencia (6), Canarias (4), Castilla y León (3), Aragón (1), Asturias (1), Balears (1), Cantabria (1), Castilla La Mancha (1), Extremadura (1), La Rioja (1), Murcia (1) and Navarra (1). During the event, José Manuel Soria pointed out that the ".es" domains have developed in parallel to the evolution of Internet and have turned, in a record time, from a minority event to a secure and well-positioned space in the Internet, related to our territory, our culture and our language. Thus, it has become a favorite domain of the Spaniards.

Aunque los dominios ".es" fueron fundados en 1989, no es hasta 1990 cuando se produce el primer registro, www.nic.es., creado por la propia entidad gestora de estos dominios de Internet. Sin embargo, el primer dominio ajeno a este organismo que aún permanece operativo es www.iac.es, que fue solicitado por el Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias en 1991. A continuación figuran www.ciemat.es (Centro de Investigaciones Energéticas, Medioambientales y Tecnológicas), www.cedex.es (Centro de Estudios de Experimentación y Obras Públicas), www.imim.es (Instituto Municipal de Investigación Médica de Barcelona), www.unizar.es (Universidad de Zaragoza), www.uniovi.es (Universidad de Oviedo), www.uv.es (Universidad de Valencia), www.upv.es (Universidad Politécnica de Valencia), www.upna.es (Universidad Pública de Navarra) y www.inia.es (Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones agrarias). Although the ".es" domain was created in 1989, it was not until 1990 when the first website was registered: www.nic.es, created by the same entity that manages these TLDs. Nevertheless, the first domain from a third-party entity was www.iac.es, requested by the Institute of Astrophysics of Canarias in 1991. The following ones were www.ciemat.es (Energy, Environmental and Technological Research Center), www.cedex.es (Research Center of Experimentation and Public Works), www.imim.es (Municipal Institute of Medical Research of Barcelona), www.unizar.es (University of Zaragoza), www.uniovi.es (University of Oviedo), www.uv.es (University of Valencia), www.upv.es (Polytechnic University of Valencia), www.upna.es (Public University of Navarra) y www.inia.es (National Institute of Rural Research).

Moreover, among the pioneers that received the award there are enterprises and institutions such as Telefónica I+D, Mapfre, Anaya, Iberdrola, Seat, Indo, Danone, the Royal Spanish Academy, the Cervantes Institute, the National Library, The National Committe of the Stock Market, the Spanish Institute of Oceanography, the Xunta de Galicia or the Generalitat Valenciana

In 2009, the ".es" domain turned 20 years old, with 1.2 million domains registered. Five years later, in 2014, more than 1.7 million domains have been registered, 500,000 more than the ".com" domains, and represent half of the domains registered in our country.