As certain as one's birthday will be the same date every year, there are events that can be said to be of that predictable nature. It occurred in the past when big events happened ("Sydney 2000"), and it has occurred this week, when the Spain's King Juan Carlos abdicated the throne on Monday to pass the mandate to his son, Philip the Sixth or Felipe VI.

Readers should know by now that the National Plan of Domain Names under .es (Order ITC/1542/2005 of 19 May) came with lists of prohibited and reserved domain names on account of the ordre public. Among the listed names, one could find "felipevi" and "felipe6". Surprisingly, "Felipesexto" was not in the list, and therefore it was free to be used. I say surprisingly because the domain name was registered after the reserved names list was elaborated by the agency Red.es.

A regulated process that operates exceptionally whenever a domain name is declared of public interest is available under Order ITC/1542/2005, based on the general interest on which the domains are expected to be managed. The owner of the domain name, previous to a decision of this sort, has 10 days to submit observations concerning the individual interests for the domain name to prevail against the "general interest". If he fails, the domain name is transferred to the public entity and the owner is reimbursed the administrative costs of the original registration. This process was used in the CNMC and Sareb cases (corresponding to the Spanish National Authority regulating the Markets and Competition, as well as the finance entity dealing with the toxic financial products from the Spanish banks), and one might think that this will be the path Red.es will follow in this case, too.