• Newspaper library Read all the interviews of the counter

Madrid, 1983. Architect, founder of Academia Play, an education channel specialized in History with two million followers on YouTube. His latest work: two illustrated history books edited by The Sphere of Books.

How was Academia Play born? I am an architect, I worked with my father. I always liked to draw ... One day, I made a video in scriving that is a technique in which a hand comes out drawing ... And, well, I posted it on YouTube and had success. They started calling me companies that wanted similar videos. I started to spend a lot of time, so I got professional. I became a friend of a friend and we spent four years living on making videos for companies. At the same time, we invented an outreach channel. We started doing science and film subjects, but what worked was History. Four years ago it was still the time when the architects of Spain were looking for another job, whatever it was. We are the country with the highest ratio of architects to habitant. I finished my degree in 2010 and I was lucky to work in my father's studio. But my friends went to London or China. I could have continued with the architecture but I enjoy this more. And now they take illustrated books of History. From what I have seen, quite neat. We try to tell the story in an aseptic way because we are not here to teach. That does not mean that they have placed us politically and that they attack us on Twitter. These days it's happening to us. And that? It only happened to us when we wrote about the History of Spain ... And that was the problem. There are people who deny that the History of Spain exists, which considers that Spain is an artificial aggregation of taifa ... As we do not influence that vision, they have attacked us. Indigenous sectors have also gotten into us for not having much influence on the Black legend, in the image of the fanatic and obscurantist country. Eye: we do not hide so many demans and disasters. Imagine you were French and spread the history of France. Would you have the same reproaches, more or less? In all countries there is internal criticism. I know that in England there is a tendency to denigrate the colonialism of the Empire, which I think was more predatory than Spanish. The thing of self-harm happens in all countries, but in Spain we tend to self-destruction, as if we could not advance by a fatality. Did you like to study History? I liked it but I had a disastrous teacher. I was lucky that my parents were educated people. Do you think kids get bored in class less than 30 years ago? I don't know. I know that you are working on a class method called inverted that favors lagging students are not left behind. And that there, our videos work very well. In the book there are six pictures to the Republic, two to the Civil War and two to the dictatorship. I was very afraid of making a mistake with the approach and I relied on Pedro Corral, who I think That has an equanimous vision. Well, we have had some criticism from both ends, but not many. They ended up with a quote from Gaziel: "Like so many other things, democracy here is nothing more than a name of classical roots and foreign content." The idea of the fatality of Spain was a vision of that time. I don't think it's so difficult to accept our past. Spain has done negative and also positive things, also in the conquest of America. America has become a very current issue. Of course there were very bad things, the parcel regimes produced many abuses but were corrected. Mestizaje was chosen and not annihilation, as in other colonialisms. Spain legislated and pioneered human rights.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more

  • Spain
  • Youtube
  • history
  • Historical memory

Culture Talaverana ceramics, the new Intangible Heritage of Unesco

Interview José Ignacio Sánchez Galán: "Climate denial is giving in to scientific evidence"

Consumption Sweet feeds the empty Spain