Biographical Dictionary
In 2011 the Academy published the first 20 volumes of a dictionary of national biography, the Diccionario Biográfico Español, to which some five thousand historians contributed. The publicly funded publication has been subject of controversy for failing to achieve the standards of objectivity associated with, for example, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. The British Dictionary restricted itself to persons who were deceased, and the historian Henry Kamen has argued that it was a mistake for its Spanish equivalent to include living figures among entries. However, while there was criticism of entries for some living people (such as the politician Esperanza Aguirre), the main allegations of bias concern articles relating to Francoist Spain. A notable example is the entry on Francisco Franco, written by Luis Suárez Fernández, in which Franco is defined as an autocratic head of state rather than a dictator. In contrast, the administration of the democratically elected President Negrín is described as dictatorial.
The dictionary sparked an outcry. Most objections came from voices on the left such as the party United Left and the newspaper Público: for his part, Green party senator Joan Saura asked for publication of the dictionary to be stopped and the offending volumes withdrawn. There was also a call for corrections from the Ministry of Education. The Academy announced in June 2011 that amendments would be made to the text on line and in future paper editions. However, in 2012, when the Minister of Education, Culture and Sport, made a statement on the subject of the dictionary, it was still not clear whether the Academy was willing to describe Franco as a dictator.
Read more about this topic: Real Academia De La Historia
Famous quotes containing the words biographical and/or dictionary:
“Biography, in its purer form, confined to the ended lives of the true and brave, may be held the fairest meed of human virtue—one given and received in entire disinterestedness—since neither can the biographer hope for acknowledgment from the subject, not the subject at all avail himself of the biographical distinction conferred.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“The reputation of a man is like his shadow; it sometimes follows and sometimes precedes him, sometimes longer and sometimes shorter than his natural size.”
—French Proverb. Quoted in Dictionary of Similes, ed. Frank J. Wilstach (1916)