On October 18, we detected an increase in free VPN signups in Spain, which peaked at 200% on October 19. After some investigating, we discovered that Spanish internet service providers (ISPs) were once again blocking many Cloudflare IP addresses throughout the country as part of an effort to prevent illegal streaming of La Liga football.
This overreaching block prevented many Spaniards from accessing legitimate streaming services, gaming servers (particularly the new MMORPG Blue Protocol), and large portions of the internet.
The block ended on October 20 after the local football games concluded, and our free signup rate returned to its previous baseline.
What happened?
An online access monitor, hayahora.futbol(new window), confirmed that several major Spanish ISPs, including Movistar, Orange, and Vodafone, blocked a large swath of Cloudflare IP addresses on October 19.
Cloudflare is a global network service that helps connect websites with visitors. In addition to providing security (like DDoS protection and SSL/TLS encryption(new window) for HTTPS), it also provides caching and content delivery services, serving millions of sites.
ISPs have been ordered to block Cloudflare IP addresses that have at any time been associated with illegal streaming sites that show pirated soccer games. However, Cloudflare’s content delivery network uses shared IP addresses, meaning many unrelated websites will use the same IP. When one of these IP addresses is blocked, any website that is linked to it becomes unreachable, even if it has no connection to piracy. As a result, countless legitimate websites and online services have also been caught up in the block, affecting millions of people.
Cloudflare and the cybersecurity group RootedCON(new window) challenged these blocks in court in March 2025. They argued the measures unavoidably block legitimate websites, but the judge rejected their request(new window), stating they failed to provide evidence that these blocks cause any harm.
Why was ‘Blue Protocol’ blocked in Spain?
One vocal group affected by this block was gamers trying to play Blue Protocol: Star Resonance. Because the game relies on Cloudflare, players in Spain could access the game, but the “Start” button didn’t appear. They could only play the game if they were connected to a VPN.
Demand was particularly high as well. Blue Protocol had its global release on October 9, meaning this was only the second weekend it had been available for Spaniards to play.
How a VPN helped
During the outage, many affected users turned to a VPN, and Proton VPN in particular, to restore access to the internet. VPNs route your traffic through servers in another country where local blocks are not enforced, allowing you to bypass them.
Learn more about how a VPN fights censorship.
Why we must fight censorship of all kinds
This kind of broad internet restriction is rare in a country with strong democratic norms — and it highlights how easy it is for essential online services to be caught in overreaching blocks. When courts authorize indiscriminate blocks like these, it’s regular people who pay the price. Through no fault of their own, millions of Spaniards lost access to their favorite online games, steaming sites, and local news.
