If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Spain’s soccer league has found a new target in its fight against pirate streams: the VPNs people use to protect their privacy online. A court in Córdoba has ordered NordVPN and Proton VPN to block specific IP addresses broadcasting illegal LaLiga matches, requiring both companies to alter their “internal systems” to make those addresses “inaccessible from Spain.” The ruling was issued without notifying either provider. Neither could challenge it before it took effect. The court says it cannot be appealed at all. LaLiga and Telefónica Audiovisual Digital brought the case to Commercial Court No. 1 of Córdoba, framing the measures as “precautionary” and taken in “defense of [LaLiga] clubs’ audiovisual rights.” The court’s theory of liability is that VPNs are “contributing” to piracy simply by doing what VPNs do, letting users change their IP address and location. The order also notes that VPNs “acknowledge and advertise” their effectiveness at evading internet restrictions. Offering a privacy tool that works, in other words, is now evidence of wrongdoing. Both companies found out about the ruling the same way everyone else did. NordVPN and Proton have said that they have received no notice of this. Proton VPN reports no disruption to its services in Spain. Whether either company can actually comply with the order in any meaningful way is an open question. Blocking IP addresses is technically possible. Doing it while maintaining the privacy guarantees that define both products is not. LaLiga has been building this blocking regime for years, and the collateral damage along the way tells you everything about where it was always heading. The scheme has previously worked through a partnership with Telefónica, giving LaLiga the power to instruct major Spanish ISPs, including Movistar, Vodafone, Orange, and DIGI, to block IP addresses it flags as hosting unauthorized streams. The problem is that LaLiga doesn’t target specific infringing content. It flags entire IP ranges shared by thousands of unrelated domains. One accused site brings down everyone else on the same address. The digital dragnet has ensnared Amazon, GitHub, Twitch, Google Fonts, and Cloudflare, among others. Catalonia’s own .cat domain registry reported service disruptions. The open-source storage project TrueNAS, after its CDN IPs were repeatedly blocked and critical security updates became unreachable for Spanish users, was driven to distribute its software via BitTorrent. A football league’s anti-piracy operation pushed a legitimate software team onto the same networks it was supposedly trying to shut down. The most dramatic moment came in October 2025, when LaLiga’s orders led ISPs to block a broad range of Cloudflare IP addresses. The blackout lasted from October 18 to October 20. Millions of Spanish users lost access to legitimate websites, gaming platforms, and streaming services. Those trying to play Blue Protocol: Star Resonance found the game’s start button had simply disappeared. According to Proton VPN, free signups from Spain surged 200% over those three days as people scrambled for any way back onto the open internet. The Córdoba court’s VPN order is LaLiga’s most aggressive move yet, but the pattern is clear enough by now. Each time the blocking regime overshoots and takes down legitimate services, the response isn’t to narrow the approach. It’s to expand it. ISPs, then infrastructure providers, then VPNs. Each escalation is framed as targeted enforcement. Each one produces wider collateral damage than the last. Meanwhile, piracy continues. The streams migrate. The 89% of flagged content that stayed online last year will stay online this year too. What changes is how much of the ordinary internet Spanish users lose access to while the league hunts for it. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Spanish Court Orders NordVPN and Proton VPN to Block Piracy Streams appeared first on Reclaim The Net.