More usability, certified data and interoperability with the European research ecosystem on Golden Age Spanish theatre: the new version of Calderón Digital is now online.
The theatre of Pedro Calderón de la Barca comprises over one hundred and twenty works — comedies, dramas and cloak-and-dagger plays. A corpus no researcher can navigate from memory, and one that, without adequate tools, remains largely unexplored.
Calderón Digital is the open-access database that makes it navigable: every work is catalogued with bibliographical data, metrical counts, a synopsis segmented by scenes and strophic changes, and an index of dramatic motifs built specifically for Calderonian theatre.
The tool, designed by Net7 for the first time as part of PRIN 2015 and active since 2017, has established itself as a reference resource for the international scholarly community. Its consolidated use prompted an update: the new version, developed within the TeSpa project (PRIN 2022, seven Italian universities) and presented at the May 2026 conference, expands search functions and strengthens citability and interoperability tools.
In terms of consultation, it introduces a clear distinction between basic search — with preset filters for quick orientation within the corpus — and advanced search, with full freedom over text fields for users who already know what they are looking for. Both pathways converge on the detail page of each individual work, where metadata can be read and downloaded.
The most significant new feature concerns citability: every exported PDF carries a digital signature with an embedded bibliographical citation, active even on copied and pasted text. A tool that was already widely used now becomes fully citable as an academic source. Integration with ASODAT — the European federation of databases on early modern Spanish theatre, coordinated by Alejandro García Reidy (Universidad de Salamanca) and Teresa Ferrer Valls (Universitat de València), with Ariadna Fuertes Seder as technical coordinator — completes the picture, opening the Calderonian corpus to a network of shared resources across research groups in different countries.
The project is the result of collective work involving, for the TeSpa team: Fausta Antonucci (national coordinator, Università Roma Tre), Marco Presotto (Università di Trento), Ilaria Resta, Sara Pezzini, Paula Casariego, Elena Merlino and Antonella Russo (Università Roma Tre), together with ASODAT representatives Alejandra Ulla (Universidade de Santiago de Compostela), Alejandro García Reidy and Ariadna Fuertes Seder.
