But python also has an array module you can use after an import, it's not loaded by default. That data structure behaves even more like the thing C calls an array.
I don't see why a python list is not a list per se. Don't be confused by the others explaining it is not a linked list - something does not have to be a linked list to be a list. It's still a numbered collection of stuff that can be sorted, thus a list.
Though it is true that as a programmer you probably are first confronted with a data structure called list when you learn a LISP, and that data structure will be a linked list.
Confronting beginners with all this is not useful for them, w3schools just adding a note and calling the python default collection thing an array is thus not that unreasonable. Though I'd prefer it if they just called it a list in the explanation below the note, after explaining that this list structure is what you are probably searching, with a link "look there for what python calls an array". So in that way I agree with you, this is not optimal.
Actually, they don't. The article claims that arrays don't exist, but you can use lists instead.
Apparently the polar opposite is true: lists don't exist, but you can use arrays instead! (And they're called "lists" for whatever reason).