Spain Faces Internet Chaos Amid Cloudflare, ISP, and LaLiga Blocking Controversy

• The Movistar and DIGI ISPs suffered continuous disruptions in Spain concerning Cloudflare infrastructure.
• Coincidentally, the outages occurred simultaneously with a LaLiga piracy crackdown. 
• Although not all Cloudflare addresses were affected, investigations revealed patterns that suggested targeted blocking. 

The ongoing disruptions at two major Spanish ISPs, Movistar and DIGI, have raised concerns in Spain's tech and legal sectors. Customers have struggled to access websites using Cloudflare's infrastructure for over a week. 

While the affected sites seemed random, the outages coincided with a piracy crackdown by Spain’s top football league LaLiga. Evidence suggests the two events are linked, highlighting ongoing issues with site-blocking practices, which remain controversial in Europe.  

Movistar and DIGI customers reported issues accessing certain websites using Cloudflare. While disruptions were widespread on Wi-Fi, mobile networks were less affected, adding complexity to the problem. 

Investigations traced the issue to Cloudflare. Sysadmin @jaumepons shared traceroute visuals from 200 points across Spain, showing systemic failures on routes connected to specific Cloudflare IPs. Although not all Cloudflare addresses were affected, patterns suggested targeted blocking measures.  

Movistar and DIGI were initially silent, leaving customers without clear answers. Some users received extra mobile data as compensation, but the lack of transparency led to suspicions that the ISPs were aware of the cause but withholding information.  

At the same time, LaLiga announced legal actions against DuckVision, a pirate streaming platform with over 200,000 users in Spain. The platform was reportedly "deactivated" by LaLiga and its anti-piracy team.  

Attention was drawn to LaLiga’s statement, particularly its accusation that Cloudflare was “intentionally protecting criminal organizations for profit.”  

LaLiga, like other European rightsholders, can compel ISPs to block piracy-related content through court orders. However, broad implementation of these measures remains controversial.  

If the Movistar and DIGI disruptions were caused by orders targeting DuckVision, legitimate Cloudflare services—and unrelated businesses—may have been unintentionally affected.

After days of speculation, Movistar, DIGI, and parent company Telefonica confirmed compliance with court orders on illegal content. While avoiding technical details, their statements acknowledged measures likely tied to the recent disruptions.  

These responses support suspicions that DuckVision’s "deactivation" involved blocking Cloudflare’s IPs linked to the platform, causing broader accessibility issues for other Cloudflare-hosted sites.  

Cloudflare stressed its neutral role as an infrastructure provider, making clear it neither supports nor profits from illegal activities, and warned that indiscriminate IP blocking hurts not just targeted platforms but also legitimate businesses relying on its services.