DNA confirms Columbus's bones in Seville, but not his origin

The investigation locates Columbus's bones in Seville, but not where he was from

The University of Granada asserts that Seville Cathedral houses authentic remains of Christopher Columbus. Led by forensic medicine professor José Antonio Lorente, the team argues that DNA analysis confirms what was merely "possible compatibility" in 2005, now "definitively established." This development arrives with the documentary Columbus DNA. His True Origin, broadcast on Spain's La 1 on Saturday, 12th at 22:25, promising to "rewrite history."

Lorente calls the data "exact" and its reliability "practically absolute," replicated by several labs, announcing publication in an international scientific journal. The study relies on DNA from Columbus's remains, his son Hernando—also buried in Seville—and his brother Diego, whose bones were kept at La Cartuja.

What does the Seville Cathedral DNA confirm?

The finding narrows, at least documentarily, part of the dispute. For decades, Seville and the Dominican Republic have claimed the admiral's remains. The Seville cathedral holds only a few pieces, while the Caribbean nation insists the bones never left, resting in a mausoleum built in 1992.

What the new research does not rule out is precisely that: that the Dominican remains are also Columbus's. "Neither are they all in Seville, nor are they all in the Dominican Republic," admits Lorente himself, after Caribbean authorities denied him access to their remains. The door remains open, along with half the controversy.

The journey of the bones: from Valladolid to Santo Domingo and back

Columbus died in May 1506 in Valladolid, but his wish was to be buried in La Española, the place he reached on October 12, 1492. The remains traveled to present-day Dominican Republic around 1536 and were deposited in Santo Domingo Cathedral. Later, the War of the Convention and the Treaty of Basel left the island in French hands, and the bones were moved to Cuba.

Another lost war, the Spanish-American War of 1898, returned them to Seville. All the bones? Here the conflicting versions begin. Some joke that the real miracle was that the French hadn't taken the cathedral's contents, while others note that the transfer—twice to the same destination—explains why pieces are missing.

Where was Columbus from? From Genoa to Galicia, Sardinia, or Mallorca

The documentary does not limit itself to resolving where the remains are: it aims to dig into where he was born, contrasting theories beyond Genoa. On the table: Catalonia, Galicia, Guadalajara, Ibiza, and Mallorca.

Ríos de Tinta merits the Galician thesis, which identifies Columbus with Pedro Madruga, Count of Camiña for his services to Alfonso V of Portugal. Columbus, meanwhile, was married to noble Felipa Moniz de Perestrelo, cousin of Madruga's vvife. The most repeated argument: Columbus wrote in Castilian with Galician turns of phrase, did not speak or write Italian—not even when asking Genoese bankers for money—and his handwriting matches Madruga's. Against this, the research itself rules out Madruga, though it does not close the door to him being another Galician.

In the more technical realm, a Sardinian origin has also been defended, linked to the Colón-Piccolomini family and the Judicate of Arborea, which the documentary does not mention. Its staunchest supporter notes that Columbus's favorite book was the Historia Rerum Ubique Gestarum, the geographical compendium by humanist Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini. Against this weighs an awkward detail: if his family was condemned for treason, what shields would he display without incriminating himself?

The most debated closing: Jewish origin

Several participants argue that the documentary closes by pointing to a Sephardic Jewish origin for Columbus, relying on population probabilities in areas like Corsica, the Italian peninsula, and the Spanish Levant. A closing that provokes a flood of reservations: it is argued that this hypothesis is not subject to the same genetic tests as the rest, and that the specific markers are not even shown.

On the side of support, it is noted that one of the financiers of the first voyage, Luis de Santángel, was a Valencian Jew, and that Bartolomé de las Casas, biographer and transcriber of his papers, came from a converso family. Columbus himself declared descent from four admirals of Castile, which, in the view of several analysts, sits poorly with a Jewish origin.

Doubts about the method: Is an international panel needed?

The matter is not settled. Some call for certification by an international, non-Spanish scientific panel to avoid conflicts of interest, while others respond that genetic data has already been replicated by several labs. Skepticism also abounds regarding whether a TV documentary is the appropriate format to present genetic data: the article, with its markers and tables, is demanded before the audiovisual montage.

On paper, the research will be published. On the table remains an awkward question: why does a discovery of this magnitude wait for television before a journal?

DNA narrows the net on where Columbus's bones are. It does not say where the man was born. And in that gap—between a cathedral, a Caribbean mausoleum, and half a dozen theories—the enigma remains as open as before Saturday.