North African DNA from northwest Spain reached Latin America

Yes. The North African genetic markers found in Galicia, León and Zamora traveled with emigrants from Spain's northwest to Latin America from 1880 onward, and today they appear in the DNA of millions of Latin Americans.

The northwest of the Iberian Peninsula has the highest rates of North African genetic markers in all of Spain. That is what studies published in **Nature** and sequencing work by the Health Research Institute of Santiago de Compostela (IDIS) suggest, placing that component between **10%** and **20%** depending on the area. That DNA did not arrive yesterday: it comes from ancient waves, some dated between the 4th and 8th centuries, before the invasion of 711. The isolation of the northwestern valleys finished fixing that mixture in the local population over the generations.

## North African DNA in the Iberian northwest

Population genetics studies have mapped that footprint with considerable precision. The genetic map published in Nature and the IDIS sequencing work agree that Galicia, Zamora and León show percentages of North African ancestry above the Spanish average. The ranges go from 10% to 20% depending on the district, a variation that reflects the geographic isolation of each valley.

The chronology matters. This is not a recent migration or a single, localized episode. The waves accumulated over centuries, from the late Roman period well into the Middle Ages. That constant trickle, combined with isolation, produced a distinctive genetic profile, clearly different from that of other regions of the peninsula.

## From Galicia to Buenos Aires: emigration from 1880

From **1880** onward, millions of people from Galicia, León and Zamora crossed the Atlantic. The main destinations were **Argentina**, Cuba, Brazil, Uruguay and Venezuela. They did not travel alone: they carried with them that specific genetic profile, very different from that of a central European or of other parts of Spain.

The scale of the movement was decisive for the final outcome. The migrants from the northwest were not a small group destined to dissolve among larger populations. They arrived in such numbers that their particular mixture became permanently integrated into the American gene pool. The flow continued for decades and affected entire regions of the continent.

## What shows up in DNA tests

When a resident of Buenos Aires, Havana or Caracas with Spanish ancestry takes an autosomal test on platforms like **23andMe** or **MyHeritage**, it is common for a residual percentage to appear labeled as North African or Maghrebi. That percentage usually falls between **1%** and **4%** of the genome.

There lies the key to the matter. Except in cases of enslaved ancestors or direct Arab migrants who arrived in the 20th century, that North African DNA did not travel its own route to America. It was inherited as a block along with the chromosomal segments coming from Galicia and the former Kingdom of León. When mapping the genome, scientists observe that the marker traveled within the very genome of the historic Spanish settlers and immigrants.

## A genetic melting pot

Latin America is a biological melting pot. Geneticists have described northwest Spain as a living museum where Celtic, Suebi, Roman and North African lineages coexist. Latin America absorbed that historical porosity through the mass emigration of the last two centuries.

The consequence is verifiable in millions of genomes today. A heritage born centuries ago on the shores of the Mediterranean and the Maghreb was written into the DNA of a large part of the Latin American population. It is not a hypothesis: it is what the analyses of contemporary populations show. That said, ancestry percentages vary depending on the company performing the test and the reference database it uses, so they should be taken as statistical estimates, not as documentary proof.