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Heh, lucky you, at least you get a message. My ISP just drops traffic to the affected IPs. No ping, no traceroute, just a spinner in the browser until it says "page not found".

Every response and comment from LaLiga, the football organization responsible for this, has been so far that this is a minor issue that only affects a few bunch of nerds who talk about "docker images" or "github repositories" or "whatever that means".

Meanwhile, there are testimonies of smart home devices like anti-theft alarms or automatic doors, that stop working whenever there is a football match, because their backends rely on Cloudflare.

Last week, a woman asked for help on social media, as the GPS tracking app she uses to see where her father with dementia is, went offline during a match. It was getting late and he still wasn't back home, and she couldn't locate the tag he was wearing to find him: https://www.infobae.com/america/agencias/2026/04/05/laliga-d...

It's hard to say this, because no one should experience an event like this, but as stressful as these are, it's the only way to make the mainstream people care about this censorship. "I cannot pull a docker image" will never be on nightly news, but safety and personal security is a more powerful driver for discourses.

They block the whole of Cloudflare R2, I believe the Docker hub is just (heh) a collateral.

When the La Liga match starts, everything that's proxied via CF (including zero access reverse tunnels) stops working.

There's even a website made for checking if the match is on: https://hayahora.futbol/

You can check if your host is affected: https://hayahora.futbol/#comprobador&domain=docker-images-pr...

This is a great example of why blanket IP blocking is such a terrible enforcement mechanism. Cloudflare hosts hundreds of thousands of services behind shared IP ranges — blocking one IP to stop a piracy stream takes out everything else on that IP, including Docker registries, API endpoints, and CDNs that have nothing to do with football.

  The real fix on your end until Spain sorts this out: set up a pull-through registry cache (e.g. registry:2 with proxy.remoteurl) on a VPS outside Spain, and point your Docker daemon's mirror config at it. Your
  GitLab runner pulls from the cache, the cache pulls from Docker Hub via a non-blocked IP. Also insulates you from Docker Hub rate limits.

  But yeah, the fact that a court order about football streaming can break docker pull for an entire country is genuinely absurd.

Barring an Internet giant suing them in court, it really feels like this is unlikely to change as most just don’t understand the why or the effect.

Someone needs to write a heist movie set in Spain where a key part of the plan is they steal something while La Liga is blocking some key security route.

This is the moral equivalent of shutting the water off for a whole city because one dude's house has a leak. The harms to society clearly and obviously outweigh any possible benefits to society. But if that one dude has the power to shut it all off, and doesn't care...

As a Spaniard, I would be very happy it cloudflare stops serving Spain. The situation is beyond stupid and I know without international pressure and shaming we're not getting rid of this abuse.

Hah. I have had to use a US-based VPN to access GitHub pretty much every weekend lately. La Liga's efforts to curb pirate TV streams are basically undermining the internet itself at this point.

This is also not new behaviour - Theo posted a YouTube about it nearly a year ago[1].

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-geGEYEw7g

This is why technology businesses and professionals need to take a little bit of an active role in local politics. Otherwise you get nonsense.

Maybe it’s time to reflect upon the reliance on centralized services? Not long ago docker hub started rate limiting access and we all turned to blanket solutions like the GitLab registry cache. I wonder if the IPFS distributed docker registry thing still exists/works.

Here in Brazil sometimes my ISP goes into a weird state where I can't SSH into a remote machune. Got two ISP links here and still sometimes I need to resort to Mullvad to get stable internet

> instado por la Liga Nacional de Fútbol Profesional y por Telefónica Audiovisual Digital,

(The trial was initiated by LaLiga and Telefonica...).

"Telefonica" is the (exclusive) distributor for the rights of streaming the matches, and is only (of course?) the main consumer (and business) Telco in Spain: they are in a game they cannot lose. This is such an abuse and no government (this, past, whichever) has done anything about it.

I had to Google why this happens, blocking cloudflare during football games seems.. Arbitrary, to say the least. Maybe something to do with hooligans trashing entire cities when their team loses? I could almost get behind that, if I thought it would work..

But no, it's apparently to stop piracy!? Turning off half the internet, and mostly the legitimate parts at that (since when do pirates use cloudflare?) seems like probably the worst method to go about it.

Someone ought to start streaming those games illegally without using cloudflare just to demonstrate how stupid this policy is

Interesting alternative. Cloudflare (market cap $58B) buys La liga (market value $5 billion), drops suit.

Just to confirm it is true. This is LaLiga bringing down essential country-wide infrastructure on soccer hours if your internet access is through main ISPs.

I'm in Spain as well and it sucks a lot. What I do now is I go thorough Cloudflare 1.1.1.1 VPN (set up on my router). Fixes the issue and there is practically no latency or bandwidth impact.

POSSIBLE FIX:

I think changing your default DNS servers to Google 8.8.8.8 or Cloudflare 1.1.1.1 might bypass the spanish sunday ban on Cloudlflare.

macOS + Cloudlfare 1.1.1.1 https://developers.cloudflare.com/1.1.1.1/setup/macos/

Google 8.8.8.8 https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/docs/using

This is a know issue and it is completely fucked up: https://www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-privacy-security/cloudflar...

What Spain does is basically censorship and it's very poorly executed. The docker image registry is only one out of the many collateral victims of this stupid law.

It's a disgrace, but apparently all relevant forces still consider soccer the most important thing in the country.

Could you bypass this with a VPN?

Why are you working instead of watching the match?

Going to play devil's advocate here but I suspect if Cloudflare had been more cooperative about taking down illegal content, LaLiga would not have resorted to blanket blocking individual IPs.

I would really like to understand more about the process that they should follow but didn't / followed but didn't satisfy them / doesn't exist, in order to remove infringing websites quickly from CloudFlare.

Thankfully, Adamo hasn’t implemented the blockade yet (if ever).

Time to use a VPN in your docker pipelines ;) Or run your systems outside of Spain.

Or can this be avoided by using an alternate DNS?

Welcome to the club, buddies! Here, in Russia, the government doesn't care about collateral damage at all when shutting down whole Internet in cities. They turn on white list mode, when only approved sites and IPs work. Businesses stop working and start losing money? They don't care. Important IT systems stop working? They don't care. People can't communicate with each other? Don't care. And seems like it will happen everywhere else. Sad to see the whole world goes down apart.

BT used to block the entire streamable.com site during football matches

Off topic but I wonder when Cloudflare is going to launch their own Docker registry as a product.

Just use a VPN

Cloudflare could resolve this without negatively impacting fundamental services... just place all newly registered sites (e.g. <30 days) on a dedicated block of IP addresses. That way, Spain's government-ordered censorship could be limited to (mostly) pirate sites. Or they could invest money in vetting customers properly.

But of course, Cloudflare rather prefers to hold their actual large customers (who don't have much of an alternative to CF) and everyday Spaniard users hostage.

Vote early, vote often

The last sentence of this submission makes no sense. You are in Spain. Allegedly, the country has a representative government. That means that you should have a way to influence the government to fix this idiocy. If, in fact, you don’t, then it is not a representative government and …ahem… further steps may be warranted to remind the government whom they work for.

Yeah, I know. Welcome to the club :(

https://x.com/ahachete/status/2035783292549755228

CF could just sue LaLiga and the judge as interrupting and intercepting telecomms it's a really serious crime in Spain. Call the AEPD too because of consumers' right against both ISP and LaLiga's snooping. Another huge fine.

This is not an issue under the civil code (civilian issues), but something to be dealt under penal (criminal) code.

In Spanish

https://www.fiscal.es/memorias/memoria2020/FISCALIA_SITE/rec...

Oh, and BTW, LaLiga has just partnered with a CF rival.

Now CF can just sue both like hell because of unfair competition:

https://nitter.tiekoetter.com/xataka/status/2042658662850724...

Yea, La Liga it's crapping out as always. Docker needs either some I2P gateway, or a Tor service.

Good. Cloudflare is the next evil entity on the internet.

Spain is a failing country. Their economy is in shambles and the government has ceded internet control to a private corporation who runs football games.

Cloudflare is cancer. And the tumor is now too big.