Pedro Calderón de la Barca y Barreda González de Henao Ruiz de Blasco y Riaño

Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1600–1681), educated by the Jesuits at the Colegio Imperial in Madrid, succeeded Lope de Vega as the principal dramatist at the royal court of King Philip IV, who knighted him into the Order of Santiago in 1637. Ordained as a Catholic priest in 1651, he devoted his later years to court pageants and sacramental plays (*autos sacramentales*).

His undisputed philosophical summit, La vida es sueño (Life Is a Dream, 1635), tells the story of Prince Segismundo, imprisoned from birth in a mountain tower because of an astrological prophecy. Segismundo's famous soliloquy contemplating whether earthly reality is merely a transient dream echoes Descartes's philosophical doubt and remains one of the crowning summits of Spanish classical literature.