[6] 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 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.

[7] 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.

[9] For his part, Green party senator Joan Saura asked for publication of the dictionary to be stopped and the offending volumes withdrawn.

[11] 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.

[16] In 2020 the academy issued a statement "deploring" recent attacks on statues of figures from Spanish history, such as Christopher Columbus, which had taken place as part of the George Floyd protests.

It reaffirmed its "commitment to the knowledge of Spain’s actions in America, beyond the falsification, the distortion and the partisan manipulation.”[17] Per article 6 of its statutes, the Real Academia de la Historia is composed of a maximum of 36 "numbered academics" who must be Spanish citizens.