Believe me, I’m well aware of the fact that Catalan is in fact not a minority language and has a large presence on the internet.

However, I do have my reasons for being concerned about the approval of such a domain, as it has some serious implications. Should all cultural and linguistic groups receive their own domains?

And when you say “of course, all nations without its own state should be able to have his own domain.” What exactly do you mean? Catalunya does not have a state, or rather is not part of a country? In saying that, naturally we would be entering into a political debate. A debate that is already quite heated in Spain and exactly the reason that ICANN’s approval of the .cat opened the pandora’s box. both given the political climate in Spain and for the rest of the world, as it has now set a precedent to other such groups. Especially, if you take a look at PuntoCat’s application in the Country section (see a fllow up story: http://www.multilingual-search.com/more-commotion-around-the-cat-domain-it%e2%80%99s-not-just-a-spanish-issue-anymore/20/09/2005/en/)
the country PuntoCat listed was Catalonia. I hope you can see where this enters in some serious political ground.

On the other hand, I will say that PuntoCat did present some very good arguments that I do agree with. However, I’m just concerned about what this means for the future.

But I do not know why I am explaining that, I guess that the reason of your comments is not ignorance, I guess you underestimate minority nations and cultures, if not, why your comments are not as follows:

If .museum was approved, why not for other cultural equipment, for example, .cinema, .theatre, .opera, billiarsalloon, etc

If .travel approved, why not other business as .bank, .pharmacie, etc or activities .sing, etc