Plurality in the Spanish-speaking world

As of October 2026, no Spanish translation of the book *Plurality* has been found. Even so, Audrey Tang has spoken about Taiwan's experience in Chile, Mexico and Spain. In the other direction, Tang herself has said that part of Taiwan's participation mechanisms came from a tool built in Madrid.

When you hear "Taiwan's digital democracy", you may think of a story about Taiwan spreading its methods to the world. In the Spanish-speaking world, though, the story flows both ways. One of the places Taiwan learned from was Madrid, the capital of Spain. This article traces how the book Plurality and Audrey Tang have been received in Spain and Latin America.

In short

As of October 2026, no Spanish translation has been found of Plurality, the book by Tang and E. Glen Weyl [1]. Even so, Tang has spoken about the book and about Taiwan's experience in Chile, Argentina, Mexico and Spain, and local newspapers have covered it [2][3][4][5].

There is also a link running the other way. Tang herself has said that the design of Taiwan's participatory budgeting (a system in which residents propose how part of a budget is spent and choose by vote) came from "Consul", a tool from Madrid [6].

For example

An event in Santiago (Chile, June 27, 2024). Pivotes, a Chilean policy advocacy organization, held an event titled «Tecnología: ¿Aliada o enemiga de la Democracia?» (Technology: ally or enemy of democracy?), attended by more than 200 people. The speakers were Tang and Weyl, whom the article introduces as «autor del libro «Plurality»» (author of the book Plurality) [2]. According to an article in Diario Financiero's DF MAS (republished by Pivotes), two hours later Tang met privately with Evelyn Matthei, the mayor of Providencia. Matthei later spoke publicly of wanting to bring a similar system to Chile [7].

Mexico City (March 4, 2026). Tang spoke at an event marking the 50th anniversary of the Mexico City campus of the university Tec de Monterrey. She explained Polis, a tool for exchanging opinions, and 6-Pack of Care, a set of principles for designing AI. She said that Polis has no reply button, and that only opinions supported by people who disagree with each other on other things spread. She also said that to people in Mexico, what she was describing might sound not like an idea from outside but like something practiced locally for generations (English transcript, CC0) [4].

In more detail

No translation yet

The only sign of a Spanish translation that could be confirmed is a proposal (issue) titled "Spanish translation for the book", opened on the book's GitHub (a website for writing documents together) on June 9, 2024. It was opened by a user in Peru, and as of October 2026 it is still open, with no comments. A page that another user added to the guide to the Thai translation's workspace, as the place for this translation, does not exist [1].

Spanish appears neither on the book's guide page nor in the language list of the official website plurality.net [1]. On the other hand, Radical Markets, the earlier book Weyl wrote with Eric Posner, was published in 2019 by the publisher Antoni Bosch editor as Mercados radicales [8]. → Radical Markets

Who passed it on

In Chile, Pivotes acted as the point of contact [2][7]. An explainer from the Library of the National Congress of Chile (BCN) also introduced, to coincide with Tang's visit on June 27, the ideas Tang developed together with Weyl [9].

In Argentina, the news site Infobae reported in November 2024 that Tang would appear on a panel titled «Pluralidad: el futuro de la democracia colaborativa y la tecnología» (Plurality: the future of collaborative democracy and technology) at a forum held by the consulting firm Abeceb. In that interview, Tang explained that the book was co-written by more than 60 people and is in the public domain (free for anyone to use) [3].

In Spain, El Confidencial (2024), El Periódico (2025) and others published interviews [10][5]. In El Periódico, asked whether Taiwan's approach could be brought to Spain, Tang answered «Sí» (yes). She named two things that are needed: a commitment to listen to people, and a shared sense of urgency about transparency. She also said that, as with Decidim, a participation tool born in Barcelona, the aim is not to replace in-person meetings but to widen participation [5].

What Taiwan learned from Madrid

In a 2016 briefing at Taiwan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Tang said that she had stayed in Madrid for about two weeks. For the first week, she said, she took part by remotely operating a life-size robot. As reasons why Madrid had become an "exporter" (輸出國) of civic tech (technology for citizens), she pointed to the large occupation movement of 2011, Pablo Soto, a programmer who joined the movement and later became a city councillor, and the electoral rise of the new party Podemos. She also said that people from around the world, including Colombia and Brazil, came to Madrid to learn (Chinese transcript, CC0) [11].

In 2020 Tang said that Taiwan's e-petition platform came from Better Reykjavik in Iceland, its participatory budgeting design from Consul in Madrid, and its platform for gathering opinions on bills from Pol.is, which is from Seattle [6]. In an interview in January of the same year, she named as international NGOs on whose boards she serves RadicalxChange in New York, Digital Future Society in Barcelona and, "soon", the CONSUL Foundation in Amsterdam. She also explained that Consul is very popular in the Spanish-speaking world [12]. As of October 2026, the page of the CONSUL DEMOCRACY Foundation (founded in 2019, based in the Netherlands) still lists Tang among its advisors with the title "Digital Minister of Taiwan" [13].

Participation systems in Spain and Latin America

Decidim's first site launched in Barcelona on January 31, 2016. According to Spanish Wikipedia, it was a copy (fork) of the Consul program built by the city of Madrid. It grew out of cooperation between the city governments of Madrid and Barcelona formed after the 2015 municipal elections, and among activists connected with the 2011 citizens' movement known as the "15M movement" [14].

Madrid's participatory budget began in 2015 with a large sum, 100 million euros. According to an article by the Consul foundation, in 2020 the city's conservative government halved the budget and added a stage for gathering support in advance, which narrows down the proposals [15]. In Chile, the Constitutional Convention that drafted a new constitution (2021–22) accepted citizens' draft articles that collected 15,000 signatures, and 78 of them met the signature requirement [16].

Note, however, that the materials on these systems mention neither Tang nor the book. Consul and the Constitutional Convention's mechanism are built around proposals, signatures and votes [15][16]. Polis, which Tang presents, by contrast has no reply function and is designed so that opinions supported across positions spread [4].

What is debated

Doubts about quadratic voting. In a 2019 essay in the magazine Nueva Sociedad, Branko Milanović introduced the quadratic voting of Mercados radicales (a way of voting in which each person holds several votes, and concentrating them on one issue becomes more and more expensive). Milanović then listed its difficulties: how many years' worth of votes would be handed out at once, how voters would judge the weight of future elections, and who has the right to vote in the first place are things the mechanism cannot resolve. The essay nonetheless concludes that the basic point, that we should think about mechanisms that can express the intensity of opinions, stands firm [17].
Can it be transferred to other countries? El Confidencial put it to Tang that her approach is criticized as too utopian, something that works in Taiwan but could not work in other countries. Tang replied that something similar had been tried in New Zealand and had worked. She also said that success requires a neutral institution strongly trusted by citizens [10].
Described as choosing by lot. Mayor Matthei described Taiwan's system as participation in which, rather than people who want to take part signing up, many people chosen by lot to be representative are invited and asked their views. The reason given was that if only volunteers take part, only the most enthusiastic come, and they just defend their own ideas [7]. These are Matthei's words, not Tang's explanation.
No reviews to be found. Within what this site has collected (October 2026), no Spanish-language review or critique dealing head-on with Plurality has been found.

Where it fits in Plurality

Most Spanish-language coverage presents this as "digital democracy" and the Taiwan case rather than in the book's own vocabulary [3][9]. The Taiwan case is covered in detail in the articles on Taiwan's digital democracy, vTaiwan and Polis. The talk in Mexico centered on 6-Pack of Care and civic AI [4].

Comparing with other language areas brings out the differences.

The Plurality movement in Japan — a case where a volunteer translation was completed and a Japanese edition came out
Plurality in the French-speaking world — a case where the French translation stopped at a partial draft
Plurality in the Portuguese-speaking world — another region with a tradition of participatory budgeting
Plurality in Italy

Sources

pluralitybook/plurality issue #949, "Spanish translation for the book" (2024-06-09) — https://github.com/pluralitybook/plurality/issues/949 ［CC0］
Pivotes, "Políticos y figuras públicas debaten sobre inteligencia artificial" (2024-07-02, in Spanish) — https://www.pivotes.cl/contenidos/articulos/politicos-y-figuras-publicas-debaten-sobre-inteligencia-artificial/
Infobae, "Audrey Tang, experta taiwanesa en innovación: "Argentina está a la vanguardia…"" (2024-11-02, in Spanish) — https://www.infobae.com/economia/2024/11/02/audrey-tang-experta-taiwanesa-en-innovacion-argentina-esta-a-la-vanguardia-y-podria-aplicar-ahora-la-democracia-digital/
Audrey Tang, "Ciudadanía Digital" (Tec de Monterrey, 2026-03-04) — https://github.com/audreyt/transcript/blob/main/2026-03-04-Ciudadanía-Digital.md ［CC0］
El Periódico, interview with Tang (2025-11-08, in Spanish) — https://www.elperiodico.com/es/internacional/20251108/audrey-tang-hacker-ministra-digital-taiwan-inteligencia-artificial-democracia-china-mozilla-barcelona-123398459
Conversation with Birgitte Andersen (2020-05-30) — https://github.com/audreyt/transcript/blob/main/2020-05-30-Conversation-with-Birgitte-Andersen.md ［CC0］
Pivotes, "El caso taiwanés que trajo Pivotes a Chile y que inspiró a Evelyn Matthei" (DF MAS, 2024-09-02, in Spanish) — https://www.pivotes.cl/contenidos/articulos/el-caso-taiwanes-que-trajo-pivotes-a-chile-y-que-inspiro-a-evelyn-matthei/
Antoni Bosch editor, Mercados radicales (2019, in Spanish) — https://antonibosch.com/libro/mercados-radicales
Library of the National Congress of Chile (BCN), "Democracia Digital para promover espacios de encuentro y aumentar la resiliencia social" (in Spanish) — https://www.bcn.cl/observatorio/asiapacifico/noticias/democracia-digital-promocion-encuentros-confianza
El Confidencial, "Esta genio de la informática salvó la democracia de su país. Ahora tiene una receta para España" (2024-05-27, in Spanish) — https://www.elconfidencial.com/tecnologia/2024-05-27/audrey-tang-taiwan-ministra-digital-democracia-plurality_3889550/
外交部公民科技外交心得分享 (Sharing experiences of civic tech diplomacy at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs) (2016-12-21, in Chinese) — https://github.com/audreyt/transcript/blob/main/2016-12-21-外交部公民科技外交心得分享.md ［CC0］
Interview with The Globe and Mail (2020-01-10) — https://github.com/audreyt/transcript/blob/main/2020-01-10-Interview-with-The-Globe-and-Mail.md ［CC0］
CONSUL DEMOCRACY Foundation, "La Fundación" — https://consuldemocracy.org/es/the-foundation/ ［CC BY-SA 4.0］
Wikipedia (Spanish), "Decidim" — https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decidim ［CC BY-SA 4.0］
CONSUL DEMOCRACY, "Hecho con Consul: Madrid" (2026-06-22, in Spanish) — https://consuldemocracy.org/es/2026/06/made-with-consul-madrid/ ［CC BY-SA 4.0］
Wikipedia (Spanish), "Convención Constitucional (Chile)" — https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convenci%C3%B3n_Constitucional_(Chile)
Branko Milanović, "Votación ponderada, revolución y aplausos en una sala de conciertos" (Nueva Sociedad, 2019-08-17, in Spanish) — https://nuso.org/articulo/votacion-ponderada-revolucion-y-aplausos-en-una-sala-de-conciertos/

We welcome error reports and questions ("What is…?"). Submissions become public issues.

Report an error in this article ・ Ask a question