Running behind Google: The limits of adopting free software platforms in education

The Democratic Digitalisation (DD) suite, a free non-commercial software platform implemented in pilot primary and secondary schools in Barcelona, has become a paradigmatic case internationally, both for its attempt to offer an alternative to Google’s hegemony and for the involvement of its promoters in debates within the European Union oriented at fostering democratic digitalisation and digital sovereignty. With the aim of identifying the drivers that led to the emergence and decline of the DD, the article examines its adoption through the voices of policymakers, activists, developers, school principals and teachers. The analysis identifies three concatenated tensions: first, it highlights the lack of a common understanding of the role of technology in education combined with the naturalisation of sociotechnical techno-solutionist imaginaries; second, the DD experience falls into the trap of emulating commercial platforms, which limits its potential for pedagogical transformation; third, there is a temporal disjunction between the needs of educational processes and the immediacy demanded of digital platforms. These tensions reveal the naturalisation of hegemonic sociotechnical imaginaries that shape how software is recognised and valued in the education sector, often setting pedagogical concerns aside.