- A Spanish court rejected La Liga’s request to fine NordVPN
- NordVPN demonstrated that blanket IP blocking hurts legitimate websites
- The wider legal battle over Spain’s dynamic blocking regime remains open
In a significant victory for the VPN industry, a Spanish court has ruled in favor of NordVPN, rejecting demands by soccer league LaLiga to impose compulsory fines.
The ruling, handed down on May 19, 2026 by the commercial court in Córdoba, marks a critical checkpoint in Spain’s controversial crackdown on illegal sports streaming. It also provides some reassurance to anyone looking for the best VPN to secure their online identity.
The dispute stems from a February 2026 injunction that ordered VPN providers such as NordVPN and Proton VPN to actively block IP addresses hosting unauthorized LaLiga streams. NordVPN resisted and presented technical evidence that ultimately convinced the court that the imposition of fines was unjustified.
However, NordVPN was quick to emphasize that this is not yet a final victory. “It is important to note that this is a procedural decision at the preliminary stage, not a final judgment on the merits of the evidence,” the company wrote in a blog post.
Spain’s aggressive IP blocking regime and its fallout
To understand why this decision is so important, it is necessary to look at how Spain’s “war on piracy” has developed.
La Liga has used dynamic injunctions to require Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and VPN companies to block access to specific IP addresses in real time.
However, this “carpet bombing” approach has caused massive collateral damage. Because many pirate streams share CDN infrastructures like Cloudflare, LaLiga’s aggressive IP bans have ended up breaking the internet in Spain for normal users.
Completely legitimate services, including GitHub, Docker and Vercel, have experienced Inintermittent outages during match windows. In a much publicized blunder, the ban list even temporarily blocked Freedom.gov, a US government portal designed to fight internet censorship.
This ongoing disruption prompted thousands of frustrated Spaniards to download tools like Proton VPN as the weekend outages worsened.
Why the court rejected the fines
In its defense, NordVPN presented conclusive technical evidence showing that La Liga’s blocking claims were fundamentally flawed.
First, the company proved that the IP addresses used for pirated streams “change constantly,” often within hours. As a result, the addresses were already out of date as any block list could be processed.
Second, NordVPN argued that enforcing blanket blocks at the IP level would result in severe overblocking, rendering thousands of legitimate websites inaccessible to innocent users.
The Commercial Court of Córdoba accepted this evidence and ruled that “it cannot be concluded that NordVPN had deliberately and without justification violated the order”.
While the main legal battle is still ahead, NordVPN treats this preliminary ruling as an important step forward.
The provider stated: “What the judgment does is confirm something we said openly from day one – the technical concerns are real and proven, and a Spanish court has now recognized that”.
