.bcn

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Status:	Delegated
Registry Provider:	CORE
Type:	Generic
Category:	Culture
Priority #:	1371 - Municipality of Barcelona

.bcn is a delegated TLD in ICANN's New gTLD Program. The Municipality of Barcelona manages the TLD and is its Registry. The proposed application succeeded and was delegated to the Root Zone on 08 July, 2015..

Application Details

The following is excerpted from the applicant's response to question #18:

"The .BCN TLD is requested by the Ajuntament de Barcelona (Barcelona City Council) as a TLD for the institutional purposes of the departments and online services of the City Council. BCN is the acronym of the city of Barcelona, used by Barcelona City Council online and offline communications, as well as by printed media (newspapers, magazines, etc) when they refer to the City.

The institutional purpose of the Barcelona City Council is to promote the welfare of the city of Barcelona, its citizens, visitors, and any lawful interest related to the city and its area of influence, as both the capital of Catalonia and an open city to the world.

The Barcelona City Council has also applied for the .BARCELONA TLD as a community TLD for the benefit of the .BARCELONA community, that is, its citizens and anyone having bona fide relations with Barcelona and its area of influence. However, the .BCN TLD will be used exclusively by the Barcelona City Council, and will not be available for registrations from third parties.

BCN is the IATA code for Barcelonaʹs international airport, and the use of this acronym has become popular, being widely used in newspapers and as an abbreviation of the name of the city. So much so that the City Council is already using “bcn.cat” (and bcn.es and bcn.net in the past) to name its main website; as such, it appears in many different publications of the Barcelona City Council.

Barcelona is the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of 101.4 square kilometers (39 square miles). The urban area of Barcelona extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of between 4,200,00 and 4,500,000 within an area of 803 square kilometers (310 square miles), making it the sixth most populous such area in the European Union after Paris, London, the Ruhr, Madrid and Milan. It is also Europeʹs largest metropolis on the Mediterranean Sea and hosts Europeʹs ninth largest container port, with a trade volume of 2.57 million TEU in 2008. Barcelona is today one of the worldʹs leading tourist, economic, trade-exhibition and cultural-sport centers, and its influence in commerce, education, entertainment, media, fashion, science, and the arts contributes to its status as one of the worlds major global cities. Barcelona is the 16th most visited city in the world and the fourth most visited in Europe after Paris, London, and Rome, with several million tourists every year. Barcelonaʹs international airport handles over 34 million passengers per year."