515 years after his death, they investigate the DNA of Columbus to find out if he was Genoese, Portuguese or Spanish

In the modest one-story stone house that no longer exists on Calle de la Magdalena in Valladolid, they surrounded the sickbed with Christopher Colombus their children and a couple of parents. There was no representative of the Court, not even his beloved Beatriz, which he took into account in his last moments.

On September 12, 1504, he left America for the last time. On November 7, upon arrival at the port of Sanlúcar de Barrameda, they must have helped him land due to the excruciating pain caused by gout and arthritis. He stayed in a rented house in Seville. He still had one mission: to claim in court his rights and privileges over the conquered lands.

There was not much left of this big and massive man with red hair, light eyes, white complexion and aquiline nose, of which no portrait is known to have been made of him in life The images we have of him are approximations according to the descriptions of those who treated him. Forensic studies carried out in 2007 ensured that his last three years of life suffered from Reiter’s syndrome or reactive arthritis, which causes burning during urination, pain, swelling of the knees and conjunctivitis.

Italian, Portuguese or Spanish?

Colon He was a Genoese born in 1451, although no document written in Italian is known to him. Although he and his son have left testimonies about their origin, a University of Granada investigation based on the latest DNA studies of the navigator, his brother Diego and his son Hernando is about to determine if he is. really born in Genoa or to give the credit for it. to the versions that make it Portuguese or even Spanish, locating its birth in different parts of the Iberian Peninsula such as Galicia, Navarre, Valencia and Mallorca. This Spanish house of studies has kept the remains of the navigator in a sealed safe since 2003. Will it finally be the Italian Cristóforo Colombo, the Portuguese Cristovao Colom or the Spaniard Christopher Columbus?

In 1479 he met Felipa moniz at the monastery of Santos, where he went to listen to mass and she stayed. Daughter of the famous Portuguese navigator Bartolomeu Perestrelo, they got married the same year and had a son, Diego.

His mother-in-law Isabel She played a key role in her son-in-law’s plans, providing him with navigation charts, maps and documents that belonged to her husband, an expert navigator. His wife Felipa He died on an imprecise date, between 1484 and 1485, which coincided with the departure of Columbus from Portugal to Spain.

Twelve years of discoveries

On October 12, 1492, Columbus discovered the island of Watling, to which he gave the name of San Salvador.. He went to Cuba, then Haiti (or the island of Hispaniola) and began his return. On his second trip, he discovered the Lesser Antilles and, on his arrival in Hispaniola, he found the fort destroyed and its inhabitants killed by the natives. After founding the city of La Isabela, he explored Cuba and Jamaica. He returned ill to Hispaniola, where his brother’s government Bartolome he was suspected of dark maneuvers, which led the Court to send a commissioner. Colon returned to Spain with him. On his third voyage, he reached the mouth of the Orinoco. Due to the lawlessness reigning in Hispaniola, the kings sent Francisco de Bobadilla – who did not have good relations with the navigator – who sent detainees to Spain Colon and his brothers. Declared innocent, he faced his fourth and final voyage, in which he reached Panama and, after hardships and severe contrasts during the voyage, he was rescued, taken to Jamaica from where he returned to Spain. He would no longer return to the lands he believed to be the Indians. It was 12 years of traveling.

The last months

In 1504 Columbus was too ill to leave Seville. He asked his son Diego, an employee of the Queen’s Guard Corps and later the King, to initiate the claim.

Columbus suffered this winter. In May 1505 he left for Segovia, where the tribunal resided. They traveled 500 kilometers on the back of a mule. Upon his arrival, he learned that on November 26 of the previous year, the Queen Isabel I La Católica, the one who had bet on him by beating the skepticism of her husband Fernando, had died in Medina del Campo. He must have discussed his business with the king. Fernando, although he received him courteously, he recommended that he speak Diego de Deza and Tavera to defend it in its claims. The dominican Deza it was no stranger to him. They had met in Salamanca when Colon He was trying to convince the Castilian court of the journey he wanted to undertake. Deza and the other brothers were excited about his plans and the support they gave to the Navigator was essential. In addition, the religious had an influence at the court and the queen mentioned it in her will.

The questions of the rents and the properties which were granted to them assured him a good economic pass. However, Columbus claimed the hereditary positions of viceroy and governor. The court refused and even offered him a noble title to León if he renounced his claims.

Columbus got worse by the day. He had to leave the cold Segovia and settled in Valladolid, a hundred kilometers away.

He had confided to his son Diego care of Beatriz Enriquez, mother of Fernando, “Provided that I can live with decorum as a person who weighs heavily on my conscience. It is not legal for me to write the reason here “. Colon has met Beatriz, from a peasant family, around 1486 when she was looking for support and they had never married. On August 15, 1488, fruit of this relationship, they had a son. When she sailed in 1492 she was responsible for her offspring.

EIn this stone house, a story, Columbus died on May 20, 1506 surrounded by his sons Diego and Fernando. “In your hands, Lord, I praise my spirit”, were his last words.

The Court not having recognized the rights claimed by Colon, his son Diego began in 1508 what was called the Colombian trials, which ended in 1563 his grandson Luis. The king refused to grant the vast estates discovered to a single person. Luis would eventually accept the titles of Duke of Veragua, Marquis of Jamaica and Admiral of the Sea of ​​the Ocean.

Where is Colón?

Colon he was buried in the Convent of San Francisco in Valladolid. Three years later, his remains were transferred to the Monastery of La Cartuja, in Seville. Years later, with her son Diego -deceased in 1526- were taken to the island of Hispaniola, and deposited in the Cathedral of Santo Domingo. In 1795, they will meet in the cathedral of Havana, where they remained until 1898, year of the independence of the island. Then they were buried again in Seville Cathedral. Despite the coincidence of DNA studies, the Dominican Republic assures that it is the custodian of the remains of the Grand Admiral and that the bones that were taken to Cuba belong to a relative.

On the site where the house where he died must have been, it is now occupied by a museum inspired by the viceroyal house that Diego Colón lived in Santo Domingo. It recalls the life and the epic of the illustrious navigator, whose place of birth is still under discussion. The only certainty was that this man, who had never commissioned a portrait of him in his life and who died in a modest stone house which no longer exists, left this world without knowing that he had discovered nothing. less than a continent.