Judge Manuel García Castellón from Spain's National Audience has this Friday ordered the Civil Guard to shut the website of the platform Tsunami Democràtic, one of the platforms organising protests in Catalonia this week, as part of an investigation into "signs of crimes of terrorism".
The Civil Guard has also ordered internet providers to "stop giving service to domains that support the platform" once the gendarmerie have identified them. They warn that otherwise they could be committing a crime. Sources note the Civil Guard only have the immediate power to block domains which are hosted in Spain.
The judge is the same one who, a few weeks ago, imprisoned without bail a number of independence supporters, also on allegations of terrorism. He also today ordered the closure of social media profiles linked to the organisation.
Tsunami's response
At the time of writing, the platform's Twitter account is still active. As soon as the news broke, they posted the following thread:
📣 Han tombat el domini https://t.co/d37kDjWIHy des de l'Estat espanyol gràcies a la col·laboració de les grans teleoperadores. Comença la censura igual que a l'1 d'octubre però vosaltres creieu que un Tsunami es pot aturar?🌊
— Tsunami Democràtic (@tsunami_dem) October 18, 2019
Com pots saltar-te la censura ⤵⤵⤵
A més, us recomanem utilitzar un VPN que us permet saltar-vos la censura espanyola. Des del mòbil us podeu instal·lar l'aplicació https://t.co/6RvnhXONmw
— Tsunami Democràtic (@tsunami_dem) October 18, 2019
They say that Spain has taken down their website "thanks to the collaboration or the large telecommunications companies" and announced they had already activated a replacement at democratictsunami.eu. They go on to suggest supporters download and use a VPN. They also ask: "The censorship is starting just like on 1st October [2017], but do you believe a tsunami can be stopped?"