Christopher Columbus beyond centuries of myth: The explorer wasn't a revolutionary thinker or a pauper in his final days

"Christopher Columbus was Spanish. He was also English, French, Portuguese, Croatian, Greek, and even Swiss. Over the centuries, researchers and writers have traced his birth to more than a dozen lands. Esteban Mira Caballos, a doctor in American History from the University of Seville, refutes all these hypotheses, maintaining, indisputably, because the sources and evidence are overwhelming, that the navigator was Genoese. The rest, he insists, are nothing more than fables shaped by individual interests, often fueled by nationalist sentiments, without providing scientific evidence."

"This debate fueled by the silences and gaps left by the navigator himself is just one of the many myths and half-truths surrounding a name embedded in the collective imagination for centuries. Mira Caballos rescues the historical figure buried among thousands of pages of fanciful, self-serving, ideological, and nationalist literature in Colon. El converso que cambio al mundo (Columbus. The convert who changed the world, 2025), a rigorous biography that debunks several of these falsehoods."

"The theory, always latent, was revived just a year ago, when Spanish state broadcaster RTVE premiered a documentary widely criticized by experts about an investigation by forensic pathologist Jose Antonio Lorente, professor of forensic medicine at the University of Granada, which concluded that Columbus was a Sephardic Jew born in Valencia. Outrageous, Mira Caballos responds: To begin with, he wasn't Jewish, but a convert, which isn't the same thing."

Researchers have attributed Christopher Columbus’s birth to more than a dozen lands, including Spain, England, France, Portugal, Croatia, Greece, and Switzerland. Esteban Mira Caballos, a doctor in American History from the University of Seville, rejects all alternative hypotheses and concludes that Columbus was Genoese based on overwhelming sources and evidence. Many competing claims reflect fables shaped by individual interests and nationalist sentiments lacking scientific proof. The theory of Jewish origins resurfaced after an RTVE-broadcast investigation led by forensic pathologist Jose Antonio Lorente that claimed a Sephardic Valencian origin; Mira Caballos counters that Columbus was a convert, not Jewish. Silence and gaps in Columbus’s records fed persistent myths.

Read at english.elpais.com