The man who seeks the origins of the descendants of Balearic Islanders from all over the world
Tomeu Caimari has helped approximately 200 people find information about their ancestors so they can apply for Spanish nationality.
For almost 10 years, genealogist Tomeu Caimari has dedicated himself to helping descendants of Balearic Islanders from all over the world find the necessary documents about their ancestors to apply for Spanish nationality. "I thought that there are people who don't know where to look for these documents and don't have the time to do it. Some have already obtained it," he explains. He has worked on cases from all the islands, but the bulk of his work "has been concentrated in Mallorca," he admits. Of the nearly 200 people he has helped, two were descendants of Menorcans; four, of Ibizans; and one, of Formentera. He explains that Ibiza is the island where he had the most trouble accessing information because many ecclesiastical archives, one of Caimari's primary sources, were burned during the Spanish Civil War.
By presenting documents such as a baptismal certificate or civil registry record, descendants of Balearic Islanders (and those from all over Spain) could apply for citizenship thanks to the "Limpos" Law, an additional provision of the Democratic Memory Law that authorized this route and which ended on October 22 of this year. Currently, it is no longer possible to apply for Spanish citizenship in this way.
Most of the cases she has handled are from residents of Puerto Rico. In fact, her phone number was circulating in Facebook groups in the country. She has also helped people from Cuba, Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina, among others. Before the regulation expired, Caimari received calls from residents of these places, among others, seeking information about godparents or godparents to apply for Spanish citizenship. They would usually give her an approximate date of birth and a name. Sometimes, it was difficult to find a person's surname because relatives—who didn't know Catalan—wouldn't spell it correctly. "They would write the 'Veny' lineage as 'Bey'," recalls
. With this information, he would search the parish registers of the village church where, in theory, the person was from, for the exact date of their birth and baptism. If the parishes didn't have them, he would consult the diocesan archives directly. Once he knew these dates, he would submit a request to the civil registry to find out if the person was registered. If they weren't, he would return to the parish to obtain a baptismal certificate. It's difficult for clients to understand the entire process involved in finding this information: "They struggled to understand that I had to go to the primary source, like the diocesan archive," he explains. Another difficulty was explaining the repetition of names in the Balearic Islands to clients. "They were shocked that five cousins had the same name: Jaume. But I explained that here it was a tradition to name children after their godparents. And then they'd say, 'Ah! That's why they all name their children Toni!'" he recounts. Many of the Mallorcans he has researched were from Manacor and emigrated to Argentina, while others were from Sóller and went to Puerto Rico. He draws a clear distinction between the two nationalities: "The people from Puerto Rico wanted to regain Spanish nationality out of affection and a sense of belonging to their homeland, while the Argentinians, as well as the Chileans and Cubans, wanted to do so to escape the difficult situations in their countries. They needed a fresh start," he explains. In addition to helping people find information to apply for Spanish nationality, he has also done so to satisfy clients' need for information about their ancestors. He tells the story of a family from Manacor. The first lineage of the person they were searching for was Ribot, and he was from Petra. "He went to Manacor, married a woman from Manacor, and had seven or eight children. When the woman was widowed, she went to Argentina with some of the children, but the eldest stayed in Mallorca. Currently, we're trying to trace him, but we don't know if he left or if he died here in Manacor," he says.
He also recalls the case of a woman whose mother told her when she was 20 that her father wasn't her biological father, but didn't say who he was. "Her mother came to Mallorca, had an affair with a man, and she was born. However, she took a DNA test, and we found her father," he says happily. In addition to this, he also creates family trees from information he finds in church records. "And I keep going back," he concludes.
