Applying for Spanish or Portuguese nationality due to Sephardic Jewish ancestry

A new video explains the Portuguese and Spanish laws granting citizenship to the descendants of Sephardic Jews expelled from the Iberian peninsula.

If you can prove you are descended from Iberian Sephardic Jews, then you are eligible to apply to Spain or Portugal for a passport. This short video by a specialist Sephardic genealogist explains the process. He can also research your Sephardic Jewish family tree for you. 

Does my DNA test prove Sephardic ancestry?

At least once a week someone posts their autosomal (‘family finder’) DNA test results to a Jewish genealogy group on Facebook, and a helpful soul proclaims that the x% of unexpected DNA is a clue to Sephardic ancestry. A couple of posts later the tester is told that their ancestors ‘fled the Inquisition’. I parody, but not much.

Is reported DNA ancestry from Iberia, North Africa, West Asia, Italy, Sicily, France, Greece, Near East, Mediterranean, etc proof of Sephardic ancestry? No. The statistical probability is that the ancestors allegedly from those places were not Jewish, but who knows?

Sometimes someone with mainly Ashkenazi ancestry wants to ‘Judaize’ unexplained segments. It is a pity because the unexplained segments may lead to insights, and those people may have been Jewish anyway.

The ethnic/geographical results of an autosomal DNA test is not a route map of your family’s travels over the last few hundred or thousand years. It approximates where different sections of your DNA - from different ancestors - may have derived. The Mediterranean has been a trade highway for thousands of years. You would expect people from different places to have migrated during that time.

You DNA results are personal to you and can open unknown doors to your family history. Why not follow the chromosomes rather than estimations derived from generalisations of data compiled from thousands of strangers? 

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