Hispanic culture and 'Menendez Pelayo Digital'

Xavier Agenjo Bullón

With regards to Menéndez Pelayo, 1999 will be marked by the maybe unexpected fact that soon there will be available, something that could be considered a new edition, both of his Complete Works as well as his Collection of Letters, as well as an update of the bibliographical studies dedicated to him. This new edition, with which Menendez Pelayo will cross the threshold of the new century, is consistent with the sign of the times. This is a Menéndez Pelayo digital, that is to say, the digitization of the Complete Works of Marcelino (of his Collection of Letters and his Bibliography) with all that this implies. That is to say, multiplying the possibilities to consult his work as if the old National Edition had sprouted as many indices as the words it contains. And that has indeed occurred, thanks to computer science.

In this way, Menéndez Pelayo becomes the best and most published Spanish author; his Complete Works, his complete Collection of Letters, his complete production in digital form. For this, its first launch, the option of a disc has been chosen, but not much later than, say, 2000, it will also be on the Internet. The initial step of cd-roms will also highlight the mistakes made during the transcription of the texts and their codification.

This new edition of Menéndez Pelayo, Menéndez Pelayo Digital, will be permanently followed without a break, by new editions, because the text can be tweaked, detecting each erratum, each interpolation, incorporating new or unpublished letters, and even in the case of the Collection of Letters those letters that only appeared summarised in the printed edition. In this way, a more perfect Menéndez Pelayo, thanks to what we might call digital textual criticism, and a more useful Menéndez Pelayo, also thanks to the powerful database management system tool, offered to the Hispanist, researcher, specialist, inquisitive person, thus achieving the widest possible dissemination of his work, because the Menéndez Pelayo Society and the vocation of his Library has no other obligation than this.

Our Newsletter has also benefited from these same techniques, and in 1999 a compact disc will also appear with everything that has been published since its creation in 1919 until 1995. Like Menéndez Pelayo digital, the Newsletter will incorporate new technological developments (DVD, Internet) to become an electronic publication in the millennium. So many words written and published in the Newsletter, a lot of data collected and disseminated through its pages, will be more accessible than ever, thanks to the means that the new information technologies provide us with.

Finally we should not forgot that Menéndez Pelayo Digital is nothing more (and nothing less) than the first mandatory step in the Menéndez Pelayo Virtual Library, a project that intends nothing else than Don Marcelino himself pursued in the only one of his works he declared not to be dissatisfied with: to bring together all the heritage of Hispanic thought so that it can be studied and known throughout the world. So that we can be proud of him, and for us to realise his limitations, to put the proverbial grain of sand in the building of the Hispanic (of Hispania) in the third millennium.

Multa et multum.