Barbara Serrano:  Good afternoon,. My name is Bárbara Serrano, co-founder of El Dragón International School.  I am here with most of my colleagues, it is not the complete team, but a good part of both the educational and pedagogical staff.   

We have put ourselves in front of the camera because we want to make a statement and share it with anyone who wants to hear it.  In recent days we are being victims of cyber bullying, if we can call it that,  in order to discredit our school and we wanted to respond to the lies that are written in different media.  We have to say that his smear campaign that we are undergoing was initiated by three or four people, disgusted with the school, because they have not been able to continue in it, because well, they did not fit into a democratic school, this not a place for everyone, but there are so many different schools and hopefully there will be many more. 

These people have teamed up with some former workers who have been fired, someone who is fired from a place he does not want to leave, is often angry.  There are other people who have a lot of elegance and respect this, there are others who do not. 

They have joined families that did not fit here and others who, for other reasons, are angry with us,  and all of them are giving rise to a campaign that is spreading in different companies,  like Google, Facebook, WhatsApp, the Ludus platform, and homeschooling platforms, and free education platforms, via e-mails, via sms and reaching home schoolers family associations, and family associations of free or respectful education, it´s also reaching different schools, it´s even reaching universities, and their students. It is reaching our families from outside, from unexpected places,  it’s reaching our colleagues from the university, whom we have not seen for a long time. 

So we understand that there are many means to make this happen. So we have tied ourselves here all and what we ask is that you listen to us, to what we want to deny  and on the other hand ask you not to help to spread this kind of thing because we have seen that there are people who do not even know us, who get to spread it and say things about us that have never occurred and are also thousands of kilometers away. 

So the right to reply is something very important in our society and well here we are, and we are going to talk a little about the lies that they say and we are going to deny it.

 
Mayte Gutierrez: Hello I am Mayte Gutiérrez, I am the secretary of the Association Growing in Freedom (Asociación creciendo en libertad) because we are an association. 

On the first slander about El Dragon being a highly lucrative company. on the one hand, The Dragon is not an SL Limited Liability company., It is an UA (unincorporated association).  it is an association and us such is registered in the national register of associations of the Ministry of the Interior since 2013.  The information is accessible to anyone who wants to make a consultation, and we were born as an association and so we continue to this day.  We do not rule out that in the future, since we have nothing against the UA and SL, we can become that legal form, but to this day certainly not. 

Regarding the false claim that this is a highly profitable company, we also have our accounts available to anyone who wants to consult, our model of society is each year. 

Now we do not give benefits, we do not rule out that in the future we can give them, but of course we operate based on the income of student fees, our workers receive their payroll in the name of the association, if at any time it needs extra income, because the partners of the association make their contributions to general improvements, nothing else, and that is available to anyone who wants to consult these data. 

Alice Sequeira: My name is Alice, I am the elementary team coordinator. 

Samuel Gonzalez: And I am Samuel, Middle School coordinator.

Alice Sequeira: Well, we want to say that the accusation that has been made about our school on social networks, that is a dictatorship in which no discrepancies on the part of families are allowed, is totally false.

Every family is given a clear explanation before entering EL Dragón on the educational model, and among all these explanations, how the decision-making in our parlament meeting take place,  which is our school parliament composed of students and pedagogical and non-pedagogical staff.

Families are not part of this institution and the decisions that can not be taken in the parlament meeting are taken by the management team, Barbara being the leader. 

Samuel Gonzalez: This is clearly explained every time a child enters school. 
 Likewise the family is informed and the tools that we have at our disposal are of democratic character, they are, as Alice said, for the personnel, and for the boys and girls. This does not prevent that the families’ involvement is very important for the development of the children, but not in the decision making,  this happens in most of the democratic schools of the world, the reference ones, Summerhill, Jalera, the Sudbury Valley School. 

Blake Yael: Hello, I am Blake, and I am a Dragonfly tutor, kindergarten in the Dragon and I want to deny that, as it has been said, that we are here Nazis and anti-Semites.

I think that any member of this team could have answered this question, but I’m very directly affected because I’m Jewish, my mother is Jewish my grandmother … and I’m also black from my father side and I can’t believe it . I have no words.  This place where I choose to work is the place with the most respect towards the people, the human beings, than any other where I have worked, and I choose to be here in large part because of this. 

I am extremely offended that this could be said of this school and of the people with whom I work. 

Hassan Meftah:  Hello, my name is Hassan Meftah, and I’m a Muslim and I’m Moroccan and I’m a Berber breed and I’ve worked here for many years with The Dragon  and I’m a cleaner and maintenance man and I’ve never really worked with utilitarian people, it’s a family and I come to work and do my job correctly and I have not seen either racist or Nazi or anti-Semitic.

 I never thought we were going to end in google, and internet and Facebook, WhatsApp, people who even say we are racist, this word, I have never seen these things here and I do not think about this because we are like people, 
 we are very human and a family, and I am denying these totally and it is a lie and that is it. 

Nora Tejero:  My name is Nora, I’m a Dragonfly tutor. I wanted to share with you the testimony of the mother who supposedly, of the girl who was supposedly attacked on the bus.

I’m not going to read it to you, but in short, she denies this aberration that this other family tells in social networks and I would just like to read how she ends it this comment that she writes in the internal chat of families of the school where she says that she loves this project and that her daughter is delighted, she is happy. 

She trusts us fully as we have the support of two other families who were also part of that meeting 

Rubén Almansa: Hello, there, I am Ruben as secretary at the administration, 

I wanted to respond to the accusation that we have thrown children in the middle of the school year because we did not agree with the opinions of the family, which is totally false.

What has happened is that when these demands of the families have been accompanied by continuous lack of respect for teachers both inside and outside the school, we have invited them, well, what we have done is to ask them not to renew their enrollment for the following year,  because we did not see it possible to continue working with them. ‘

Mayte Gutierrez: I am Mayte again, also as head of administration, regarding the fallacies about the expulsion of a worker,

I have commented that due to the repeated demands for explanations, the dragon as an association and like any other employer of any other type of company,  is obliged by law to maintain the confidentiality on the departure of the workers and to respect those workers, can not divulge any type of data of any nuance on the subject.

 
Azahara Velasco: I am Azahara, primary tutor and well. 

Another thing that is said out there is that the Dragon exploits the workers. I feel and I have always felt lucky and proud to be here.  I do not know if there will be a better place in Spain to work as an educator and that’s why I came here and that’s why I’m here,  it seems like an amazing opportunity that I’ve had. In this school there area ethics and a companionship between the team that I think it shadows any other place where you can work.

Well, I do not know what all the slanders are about, I do not know what the objective of all this is,  but I think the fact of opening a path, being the first official democratic school in Spain, which is easier said than done, we are doing something very big and maybe it can be the envy of others, or maybe this as part of the process, but it is completely unfair. 

Marta de la Morena:  I am Marta and I am also tutor of elementary and middle school and what’s happening basically frustrates me,  because here, we are all working with a lot of love, with lots of fun, optimism, positivity and these things suddenly feel like they have no meaning, 

If someone does not want to bring their children here then do not bring them, but let us continue to enjoy as we do every day. This is wonderful.

 
Héctor Melo: Hi, I’m Hector, I’m the cook, the kitchen chef and the one responsible for food here.

 I’ve been here three years, and I’m going to start my fourth year in this school soon. 

Within my long working experience, over 25 years working in kitchens, I can say that these are the three happiest years where I’m really enjoying my profession,  as much for the children who are in this school as for the team.

I have always felt very well treated, very well taken care of and I do not understand all these things that are happening around, I would like you to please let all this team work, they are people who put give it all every day. 

Samuel Gonzalez: I want to tell you to complete this video, that this is a project with a great social responsibility and no matter what happens this team will continue to work here so that El Dragon can move forward, 
 the first democratic school in Spain to get ahead and we can open a gap where an alternative education spreads  and __ in Spain and we will do so even if we put a thousand clubs in the wheel. 

Blake Yael” I also wanted to say that it’s very easy to hide behind the computer’s screens, in all these networks and such and that is why we all wanted to meet and show our face, so you see us. 

We believe that we are very accessible people, open and really working, as Hector and Marta and everyone said, giving it all every day and so getting out here in front of you is not easy to be in a video, but we want to be here all together and defending our school, our ideas and this education in the that we all believe. 

Azahara Velasco: We are fortunate to enjoy our work each and every day that we get up to come to work. Let us work, please. We are thrilled to do s 
Nora Tejero I wanted to say how I deelply appreciate being part of this team, 
 I entered this year, for me this school was a model in this type of free education. It’s true, it’s not just on paper.

Here we have the opportunity to live relationships of warmth, affection, where the kid is the protagonist of his day to day life and we try to adjust to his needs.

We strive every day, we give the maximum and it produces a great sadness to me to have to read these comments of families that until now have been part of our day to day. They are full of rancor and that it is very painful.

Barbara Serrano: We wish them all the happiness, we work to make a world a little happier, we see many happy children,  and in the end happy people do not hurt others, at least not voluntarily. 

So, let us work and come to visit us if you want. Here we are.