NeuralFlow blocked by LaLiga: what's happening and how to fix it

TL;DR for affected users: If you’re on Movistar/O2 in Spain and can’t access NeuralFlow on weekends, it’s not a technical issue. It’s a court-ordered block requested by LaLiga. Scroll to the bottom for a 2-minute fix.

If you’ve been trying to access NeuralFlow on weekends and the site won’t load, welcome to the club. It’s not your connection. It’s not the server. It’s Spain.

This post is a heads-up for our readers, an explanation of what’s going on, and — I’ll be blunt — a documented exercise in frustration against one of the most embarrassing internet policy disasters in recent European history.

What’s happening

Since February 2025, NeuralFlow has been blocked in Spain every weekend during LaLiga football matches. Not because we stream pirated football. Not because we break any law. But because we share Cloudflare infrastructure with websites that LaLiga has flagged as pirate streams.

The tool hayahora.futbol confirms it:

IP 188.114.96.5 → Blocked on Movistar
IP 188.114.97.5 → Blocked on Movistar

If you’re on Movistar or O2 (same network), every match weekend NeuralFlow vanishes for you. No warning. No clear error message. The site just won’t load.

How Spain got here

The story is long and it stinks from the start.

On December 18, 2024, Commercial Court No. 6 of Barcelona issued Ruling 310/2024. The judge — whose name doesn’t appear in any public record, which tells you something — authorized LaLiga to block IP ranges dynamically on a weekly basis, with no need for individual judicial approval per block. A permanent blank check valid through the 2026/2027 season.

How did they get such a favorable ruling so fast? Simple: Telefónica Audiovisual Digital sued Telefónica de España. One subsidiary sued another subsidiary of the same group, which offered no defense. The judge, facing zero opposition, approved the measures without a proportionality test, without a technical audit, and without hearing from the thousands of websites that would become collateral damage.

Movistar, Orange, Vodafone, and Digi — all major Spanish ISPs — followed suit and offered no resistance. Nobody defended the affected parties because the affected parties weren’t even part of the proceedings.

There’s a legal term for this: procedural artifice. RootedCON (Spain’s largest security conference) called it outright “hacking the law.”

The hall of shame

Javier Tebas and LaLiga, who have spent years turning football into a digital extortion business. A man who runs a football league has more power over Spain’s internet infrastructure than any regulatory body. He’s managed to take down thousands of legitimate websites every weekend and publicly celebrates it as a success. He’s even accused Cloudflare of collaborating with child pornography to justify the blocks. No evidence. No shame.

The unnamed judge at Commercial Court No. 6 of Barcelona, who signed a ruling affecting millions of users and thousands of websites without anyone knowing who they are. Who approved a mass censorship mechanism without a proportionality test, without a technical audit, and whose sole justification was that nobody opposed it. In a functioning democracy, a ruling with this level of impact on freedom of information would have a name, a face, and accountability.

Movistar/Telefónica, who voluntarily offered no defense and enthusiastically executes the blocks. When you call O2 to complain, they say they’ve “passed along a note.” The ruling explicitly states that blocks must not harm third parties. They’re violating that every weekend. And nobody forces them to stop.

Spain’s political parties, who either voted against or abstained from a parliamentary proposal that simply asked for the blocks to be precise and not affect legitimate websites. They weren’t asking to end the fight against piracy. They were asking not to break the internet every weekend by accident. It was rejected.

The Spanish government, which has been saying for months that it has “no evidence of overblocking” while thousands of businesses and websites document real economic losses. Every regulatory body — telecom authority, consumer office — has systematically ignored complaints.

Mainstream media, who have covered this tepidly when they’ve covered it at all. A private censorship system affecting 20% of Spain’s internet every weekend should be front-page news. It’s gotten some coverage in tech outlets like Xataka and Bandaancha — and virtually silence everywhere else.

Current status

The ruling is valid through the 2026/2027 season. This isn’t ending soon.
Cloudflare and RootedCON have appealed to Spain’s Constitutional Court, but no resolution is expected short-term.
Parliament has closed the legislative route. The government looks the other way. Regulators are captured or absent.
LaLiga has publicly called the blocks “proportional, surgical, and limited.” Thousands of businesses with documented losses disagree.

How to access NeuralFlow if you’re blocked

If you’re on Movistar or O2 in Spain and can’t access the site on weekends, you have several options:

Option 1: Cloudflare WARP (free, 2 minutes)

Cloudflare offers a free VPN called WARP built for exactly this scenario. Download it at 1.1.1.1 for Windows, Mac, iOS, or Android. Turn it on and you’re done. Free, fast, no account required.

Option 2: Switch ISPs

If you’re on Movistar/O2, the block is total. With Vodafone, Orange, Masmovil, or DIGI, NeuralFlow loads without a VPN. If you’re already considering switching providers, here’s one more reason.

Option 3: Change your DNS

Sometimes switching your DNS to 1.1.1.1 (Cloudflare) or 9.9.9.9 (Quad9) is enough if the block is DNS-level only. On Movistar the block is IP-based, so this doesn’t always work.

If you’re interested in taking control of your own infrastructure, we have a complete self-hosting guide covering everything from self-hosted analytics to full server setups on a cheap VPS.

Why this matters beyond NeuralFlow

NeuralFlow is a small blog. The direct impact on us is annoying but manageable. What’s not manageable is the precedent.

A private company has a judicial blank check to decide what works and what doesn’t on Spain’s internet, every weekend, with no oversight, no transparency, and no recourse for those affected. Business websites, government portals, payment gateways, developer tools, user communities — all have been blocked. Hundreds of thousands of euros in documented losses. No apology. No compensation.

If it can happen to NeuralFlow, it can happen to any website on shared infrastructure. And in 2025, that’s virtually every website.

Register your site as affected at afectadosporlaliga.palbin.com. Every documented case strengthens the Constitutional Court appeal. If you have an online business and have suffered losses, consider exercising your legal rights — it’s the only thing the government suggests doing, which tells you everything about the state of things.

NeuralFlow will keep publishing as usual. If you can’t access us, use WARP. If you want this to change, make noise.

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