Almost a third of the Spanish population have a non-Christian genetic heritage, according to a new study. Nearly 20 per cent of the present population of the Iberian peninsula has Sephardic Jewish ancestry, and 11 per cent bear Moorish DNA signatures, a team of geneticists has found. The genetic study, based on an analysis of Y chromosomes, was conducted by a team of biologists led by Mark A. Jobling of the University of Leicester in England and Francesc Calafell of the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. The genetic signatures reflect the forced conversions to Christianity in the 14th and 15th centuries after Christian armies wrested Spain back from Muslim control. The new finding bears on two very different views of Spanish history: one holds that Spanish civilization is Catholic and all other influences are foreign, the other that Spain has been enriched by drawing from all three of its historical cultures, Catholic, Jewish and Muslim.
The biologists developed a Y chromosome signature for Sephardic men by studying Sephardic Jewish communities in places where Jews migrated after being expelled from Spain at the end of the 15th century. They also characterized the Y chromosomes of the Arab and Berber army that invaded Spain in 711 CE from data on people now living in Morocco and Western Sahara. As most of the Y chromosome remains unchanged from father to son, the proportions of Sephardic and Moorish ancestry detected in the present population are probably the same as those just after the 1492 expulsions, assuming no further emigrations since then. Jews first settled in Spain during the early years of the Roman empire. Sephardic Jews - those who were forced to leave Spain and settled in countries around the Mediterranean - are so-called after the Hebrew word for Spain, Sepharad. Today, there are less than 15,000 Jews in Spain, and the overwhelming majority of the population is Catholic.
