More on “DBE-gate”
The uproar continues around Diccionario Biográfico Español, whose first 25 volumes were released last week by the Royal Academy of History, as the Spanish Parliament is demanding a thorough revision. The Financial Times covers the controversy; and I joined in on a collective op-ed that appeared yesterday in Público:
A new political culture was born when tens of thousands of us took to the streets to yell: “Real Democracy, Now!” From that moment on we have begun to translate many scandals around us in a new language, a language that is becoming understandable to a growing number of people. Spain’s lack of democratic culture is not just limited to parliamentary representation but affects many other institutions as well, including those institutions that in theory are in charge of producing knowledge–although in practice they produce ideology, or worse, ideologies that go against the principles of democracy.
Una nueva cultura política ha nacido cuando decenas de miles de ciudadanos hemos salido a la calle a gritar: “¡Democracia real, ya!”. Desde entonces podemos empezar a traducir muchos escándalos que nos rodean a ese nuevo lenguaje comprensible para una mayoría creciente de personas. Porque los déficits de democracia no se reducen a la representación parlamentaria sino que atraviesan otras muchas instituciones, entre ellas las que en teoría se encargan de producir conocimiento, aunque en la práctica reproducen ideología e incluso ideología contraria a los principios democráticos.
Read the full FT piece here, and the op-ed in Público here. Earlier coverage here.
