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Oct 23, 2026 · dspace.umh.es

A Spanish History Teacher Built an AI Platform for Talking with Historical Figures: Julio Candela and Habla con la Historia

Julio Candela teaches geography and history at a secondary school in Elche, Spain. In October 2023 he launched Habla con la Historia, a website where students talk with AI versions of historical figures and watch them debate. It drew more than 83,000 users from 25 countries in its first half of 2024.

Teachers spend their days trying to make a subject come alive for students who did not choose it. Most never get to turn their best classroom idea into a product other teachers can use. Julio Candela did, without leaving his job.

This article is for teachers and other education professionals who wonder whether one person can turn a teaching idea into an AI tool. We look at what he built, how it spread, and then, in a separate section, at what his teaching experience brings that a software company would not.

Who he is

Julio Candela teaches geography and history at a public secondary school, the IES Montserrat Roig, in Elche, in the province of Alicante, Spain. He still teaches while running the project.

What he built

Habla con la Historia ("Talk with History") is a website where students and teachers can hold conversations with AI versions of historical figures. It launched in October 2023.

  • Conversations with historical figures. Users ask questions and get answers in the voice of figures such as Cervantes, Aristotle, Einstein or Saint Teresa of Ávila. By mid-2024 the site had about 250 characters.
  • Debates between figures. Users can propose a topic and have several historical figures argue about it from their own perspectives.
  • Historical diaries. A members-only feature generates personal diaries written as if by a historical figure, according to the Spanish education magazine EDUCACIÓN 3.0.
  • Teacher control. Teachers can set themes or guiding questions so that conversations stay on the topic they are teaching, according to the site.

According to the site's footer, its images and content were made with the help of Midjourney, DALL·E 3 and OpenAI's generative AI technology.

How it spread

A 2024 paper co-written by Candela and a researcher at the Universidad Miguel Hernández de Elche reports the project's reach:

  • Users. Between January 1 and June 10, 2024, the site had 83,820 users from 25 countries. About 69% were in Spain, followed by Argentina, Chile, Mexico and Colombia.
  • Visits. The site passed 100,000 visits after its launch in October 2023.
  • Classroom use. In a survey of 50 teachers who had used the platform for six months, most used it weekly, mainly in history but also in language and literature and other social sciences. According to the paper, 75% of the teachers said their students showed strong interest or were highly motivated.

Regional media have picked up the story. A news site in Ávila, for example, covered the site's conversations with local historical figures such as Saint Teresa of Ávila, Isabella I of Castile and former prime minister Adolfo Suárez.

What teaching experience gave him that a software company would not

This section is our analysis, not a claim made by Candela.

  • Knowing what students respond to. A teacher knows that asking questions engages students more than reading answers. The product is built around asking, not around delivering content.
  • Knowing how a lesson is structured. Features such as guiding questions and debates on a set topic match how a history class actually runs.
  • Knowing the risks of AI in class. The site's FAQ admits that the AI can mix up information or produce incorrect details, and presents this as a chance for students to check facts and learn to spot misinformation. That is a teacher's way of turning a weakness of AI into a lesson.
  • Reaching other teachers. Spanish-speaking teachers are a network: education magazines, regional media and academic papers carried the project far beyond his own school.

What you can copy

These are our suggestions, drawn from his story.

  1. Start from your own classroom. He built a tool for the subject he teaches every day, not a general education platform.
  2. Keep the teacher in control. Let teachers steer the AI toward their lesson instead of leaving students alone with it.
  3. Give most of it away, charge for extras. The core conversations are free to use, with some features for members.
  4. Measure and publish. Usage data and a teacher survey turned a side project into something other teachers and the press could trust.
  5. Use your language as an advantage. A tool in Spanish reached teachers across Spain and Latin America, a market that English-first products often serve less well.

Notes on the sources

The figures on users, visits, characters and the teacher survey come from a 2024 paper by Virgilio Candela Sevila of the Universidad Miguel Hernández de Elche and Julio Candela, published in a Dykinson volume on educational innovation; Julio Candela is a co-author, so the figures are reported by the project itself. The paper describes the project as one Julio Candela carried out; we found no mention of a team, staff or company behind the site, and an archived copy of the site's legal notice names Julio A. Candela as the operator. The members-only feature is described by EDUCACIÓN 3.0; current prices are not stated in the sources. The paper, the EDUCACIÓN 3.0 article and the Ávila news article are in Spanish; descriptions here are our translation.

Sources

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