Was Christopher Columbus Spanish? Researchers open 15th-century tomb in Galicia to shed light on origins of navigator who ‘discovered’ America

A new chapter is added to the historical yellow on the most famous navigator in history: some Spanish researchers they opened the tomb of a 15th-century cleric and they exhumed his bones in order to test the theory that Christopher Columbus came from the northwestern Spanish region of Galicia.

For us Italians, but actually for the majority of historians, the captain of the Ninaof the Pint and of Saint Mary was born in Genoa in 1451at the time a flourishing maritime republic when Italy was still divided into many small regional states, but the hypotheses on the origins of Columbus are actually many and very different from each other.

The most widespread alternative hypothesis is that according to which the “discoverer of America” ​​was born in Spain, more precisely in the regions of Galicia, Catalonia, Valencia, Majorca or Guadalajara. Others have speculated that Columbus was even Portuguese: a spy hired to divert the attention of the Spanish crown from the African continent and its treasures in the midst of the early colonial period.

On Monday, November 21, according to reports from the English newspaper The Guardian, a team of restorers, archaeologists and forensic anthropologists, working in the church of San Martín de Sobrán in the Galician city of Vilagarcía de Arousa, opened the tomb of Johan Marinho de Soutomaiora nobleman and archdeacon who, according to data recovered from the Galician camp of Columbus, may have been the navigator’s cousin.

DNA will be extracted from the seven bone fragments exhumed from the tomb and then compared with samples taken from the remains of Columbus and those of his brother and son. The researchers also collected bone samples from another church in the area, where other possible relatives of the explorer are thought to be buried.

The Galician Association of Columbus, the main proponent of the Iberian origins theory, claims that Columbus came from the region around the Pontevedra estuary, and points out that the surname “Colón” (Spanish equivalent for “Colombo”) is well documented in the area. It has also been suggested that Columbus may have been the Galician knight Pedro Álvarez de Soutomaior, also known by his nickname Pedro Madruga (Peter “the Early Bird”).

“It seems that we are closer to obtaining the DNA of a Soutomaior,” the president of the association, Eduardo Esteban Meruéndano, told the newspaper La Voz de Galicia.

Everyone remembers that the navigator arrived in the Caribbean islands on October 12, 1492 (the date on which Columbus Day is still celebrated in the United States today) sent by the Catholic kings of Spain Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon. Not everyone knows that Columbus died in the Iberian city of Valladolid in 1506 at the age of 55, but wanted to be buried on the island of Hispaniola, now divided between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. His remains were taken there in 1542, then transferred to Cuba in 1795 and then taken to Seville in 1898 when Spain captured the island of Cuba after the Spanish-American War.

Although samples were collected from the remains of Colombo between 2004 and 2005, i researchers had to wait 16 years for the development of the technology necessary for a proper analysis to determine the true origins of the explorer.

For the most fanatical defenders of the illustrious Italian birthplace, it is good to specify that i Spanish researchers are not trying to appropriate the origins of Columbusbut the opposite: “There is no doubt on our part (about the Italian origin), but we can provide objective data that can … close a number of existing theories,” said José Antonio Lorente, lead scientist of the project of research.

There are in fact many versions about the origins of the sailor: in Italy alone, at least 8 different places are competing for paternity: Cogoleto and Terrarossa Colombo (fraction of the municipality of Mocònesi) in the Genoese area, Chiusanico in the province of Imperia, Cuccaro Monferrato, in the Alessandria area, Albissola Marina in the Province of Savona, Savona itself, Bettola, in the Piacenza area, and Sanluri, in Southern Sardinia .

Someone argues that Columbus was born in Spain, yes, but with Jewish origins, but the most imaginative theory is certainly the one that wants him to be Polish, even son of King Ladislaus III, who governed the country for only ten years from 1434 to 1444, dying at the age of only 20 in the battle of Varna against the Turks. Not only would this take us far out of the area, but it would bring forward the birth of Columbus by at least 7 years. However, it is nice to note that the best-known navigator of all time makes us travel again to reconstruct his story more than five centuries after his disappearance.