So weird. I have 3 Spanish domains won at auction I needed to renew, since the Whois information says they expire this month. I haven't even owned them more than 6 months, so this isn't right, but I don't want to lose them. But first, I have to find them. It took about a week, many emails and calls, and the help of a Spanish-speaking fireman.

Seriously.

Country code domains are domains ending in a special extension belonging to that country, like cars.us or autos.ca belong to the U.S. and Canada, respectively. Each country may choose whether or not they want non-residents to be allowed to own their country domains. They can also add special restrictions. Canada wants only Canadians to own theirs, so they require a Canadian address, and they make efforts to verify that it's valid. Spain, with their ".es" domains, is willing to let almost anyone who is interested in Spain to register their domains, but they want to know exactly who you are. I had to submit a passport.

The only problem is that their registry is rather cumbersome, and the webpages so involved, that it took me, the above-mentioned fireman, and a programmer to find anything resembling a Renew button. So I could pay to have them extended for another year or so. It was in there, but it was like it was hidden in a footnote only crazy people would look for. Okay, exaggeration; but it was almost that bad. The fireman, who speaks South American Spanish, was even complaining. At one point he even declared that people in Spain speak "the worst Spanish ever." (My apologies to any Spaniards. It's just what he said.) I gathered that the difference is like that between American English and British English.

So if anyone has any .es domains and wonders how to renew them, I can tell you now. And if you need to know how to preserve and store narwhal horn, got that info too. They are equally likely, I guess.