Spain and the Dominican Republic both claim Columbus's body; a 2006 DNA test matched the Seville bones, and Santo Domingo refused testing

Columbus was buried in Valladolid. In 1509 his remains were moved to the monastery of La Cartuja near Seville. In 1537 the widow of his son Diego sent the bones of Columbus and Diego to the cathedral of Santo Domingo. When Spain ceded Hispaniola to France in 1795, it took a set of remains to Havana. In 1898, when the Spanish-American War began, it shipped them to Seville Cathedral. The Dominican Republic says Spain took the wrong body. Its case rests on a lead box bearing Columbus's name that Dominican workmen found in the Santo Domingo cathedral in 1877^†. In 2002 the Seville historian Marcial Castro started a DNA project with the geneticist José Antonio Lorente of the University of Granada. The Dominican government refused to let the team take samples. On 19 May 2006 the team reported that mitochondrial DNA from the Seville bones matched DNA from Columbus's brother Diego. Juan Bautista Mieses, director of the Columbus Lighthouse in Santo Domingo, said the remains "have never left Dominican territory." Castro said part of the body might be in each city, since it had been moved several times. In October 2024 the Spanish documentary "Colón ADN, su verdadero origen" said new tests, also using DNA from his son Hernando, confirmed the Seville bones. The geneticists Antonio Alonso and Antonio Salas said the film presented no DNA data. In 2026 Seville Cathedral and the Columbus Lighthouse in Santo Domingo each still hold a tomb for him^†.