Five accurate HTR models for different early modern Spanish calligraphies

The New Spain Fleets project has developed five highly accurate HTR models — covering Redonda, Procesal simple, Procesal encadenada, Itálica cursiva, and Pseudorredonda scripts — tailored to the most common handwriting styles in 16th–18th-century Spanish documents from both Europe and the Americas. By prioritising document classification and curation over generic model training, this approach consistently outperforms existing Spanish models available in Transkribus, demonstrating that specialisation is the key to unlocking early modern archival material.