The goal
To offer scholars of Golden Age Spanish theatre — philologists, historians of early modern literature, university researchers — a structured, open-access digital tool for the study of Calderón de la Barca’s theatre. To bring together bibliographical data, metrical counts, synopses segmented by scenes and strophic changes, and an index of dramatic motifs within a single interface accessible to specialist researchers and to anyone approaching the theatre of the Siglo de Oro.
Our response
The complete redesign of a database already active and in use by the international scholarly community, originally developed by Net7 as part of the earlier TeSpa project (PRIN 2015, 2017–2020) and now updated on commission from the new research cycle (PRIN 2022). The new version improves overall usability and introduces two features that strengthen its academic standing: the ability to download records in PDF format with embedded metadata, and a digital signature applied to every exported file with automatic bibliographical citation — active even on copied and pasted text. In terms of interoperability, the new Calderón Digital integrates with ASODAT, the European aggregator connecting the principal databases on early modern Spanish theatre.
An information architecture built on the needs of philological research
The database is structured around four sections reflecting the logic of theatrical research: bibliographical data; dating, verse and strophe counts; characters, space and time; genre and synopsis. Each section addresses a distinct level of analysis, enabling targeted queries by formal aspect — metre, dramatic structure, scene segmentation — or by theme, through an index of recurring motifs built specifically for Calderonian theatre. The search system operates on two levels: a basic search with preset filters, designed for quick orientation within the corpus, and an advanced search with greater freedom over text fields, aimed at users who already know what they are looking for. Both pathways lead to the detail page for each individual work, where all metadata converge in a readable, downloadable record. The redesign has made this architecture more fluid and navigable, without flattening the scientific complexity on which the database is built.
Certified, citable and interoperable data
The platform is developed on WordPress with Muruca, the framework designed by Net7 for digital libraries and research databases, which allows precise modelling of both the data-entry backend — where researchers save and update records — and the public-facing consultation frontend. The metadata for each record are exported and saved to Zenodo, the open-access repository that assigns a DOI to every uploaded resource, ensuring that the scholarly work remains accessible and preserved independently of the delivery platform. The export system generates PDFs with embedded metadata and a digital signature, while integration with ASODAT — the project coordinated by multiple European research groups for the aggregation of Golden Age Spanish theatre databases — opens the Calderonian corpus to a wider network of scientific resources. The backend remains continuously updatable, ensuring the progressive expansion of the corpus over time.
