Christopher Columbus: Not Humble Italian Origins But Spanish Nobility
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For the first time, a new scientific study has provided genetic evidence that points to Christopher Columbus having descended from Galician nobility in Spain and specifically from the Sotomayor lineage.
The official version reflected in the history books is that Columbus was born in the Italian city of Genoa, on the north west coast. Indeed, Genoese pride in Columbus is reflected in various monuments and street names, and he is a central figure in the city’s maritime history. The story goes that he was of humble origins and somehow managed to convince Spain's Catholic Monarchs to finance what no one thought possible. This origin story has been questioned for decades by historians, linguists and, more recently, geneticists.
The latest chapter in this debate comes from a crypt in Gelves, a town in Seville where at least seven direct descendants of the explorer are buried, according to a new study by a team of researchers from the Citogen laboratory and the Complutense University of Madrid. They studied DNA and used genetic modelling to reach the conclusion (not yet peer-reviewed) that Columbus was likely from Galicia in north west Spain and to be the nobleman Pedro Álvarez de Sotomayor, known as Pedro Madruga. So, Spanish nobility, not an Italian of humble origins. You can just hear the uproar in Genoa as this news filters through.
The hypothesis that Columbus could be Pedro Álvarez de Sotomayor, or his son, is not new. It was first formulated by the historian Celso García de la Riega from Pontevedra at the beginning of the 20th century. What made it persist was not so much the conviction of its advocates as the accumulation of coincidences that nobody has managed to explain completely.
The authors of the new study are careful to calibrate their conclusions. They acknowledge that this is indirect evidence, obtained through descendants, not Columbus' own DNA, and that their results require independent verification.