Madrid (EFE).- As of this Tuesday, Spain has the “Hispanic History” portal, a website where you can learn about its past through the geolocations of more than 20,000 events and 50,000 characters, which makes it the first country in the world in having this informative digital tool.
The digital encyclopedia that contains the largest bank of information on Hispanic history gathered to date (https://historia-hispanica.rah.es/), prepared by the Royal Academy of History (RAH), will be presented to the 10:30 am at the Royal Palace of Madrid in an act presided over by the king and queen, who will be accompanied by the First Vice President of the Government and Minister of Economic Affairs, Nadia Calviño.
The chosen scenario has been the Hall of Columns to give packaging to what is considered a technological milestone applied to knowledge of the past and present of Spain, being the first time that a virtual space of these characteristics has been developed, according to the RAH.
The great novelty that it contributes is that it is a kind of ´google maps´ of the history of Spain with 150,000 geographical references, where the characters are linked to the events and it allows searches not only by names, but also by times, places and themes.
“Spain is the first country that happens to have its history georeferenced”, they emphasize from the RAH, an institution directed by Carmen Iglesias.
The main page is a world map that can be seen in flat or satellite format and as the image is enlarged, ‘tacks’ are discovered with the places where a historical event occurred from the year 1,350,000 BC to the present day throughout the world, especially in the territories that were at some point under Spanish rule.
The user can zoom in to get closer to the point they choose on the map and when they land on each geographic marker, a window is displayed with a list of characters born or died in that place in alphabetical order and the milestones that happened there, classified chronologically.
The new website draws on what is already included in the digital Spanish Biographical Dictionary, one of the emblematic projects of the RAH inaugurated in April 2018, where the 50,000 biographies of deceased personalities are stored, and the Chronological Atlas of the History of Spain, operational since 2008.
The contents and functionalities of the dictionary are integrated and geopositioned in the digital application, which allows all the historical episodes and characters to be linked together and can be better contextualized.
At the bottom of the portal there are four search areas on characters (who), times (when), places (where) and themes (what) and various filters can be applied to refine the location of content.
The section on historical events has a “Timeline” that allows you to set a specific year and display the characters and events that occurred then, with the possibility of expanding the map to access something specific.
The website, also available in English, is designed to be very visual and easy to use, as it is aimed at both researchers and the general public.
It includes a suggestion and query box so that anyone can contribute to enrich and update the work or warn of possible errors.
All the biographies are signed by experts and the contents have “the criteria of authority and the guarantee of scientific quality” which, according to the RAH, are provided by the 5,000 historians and the 500 national and international scientific institutions that have participated in the elaboration of the database, financed in part by the Ministry of Science and Innovation.
