Tabarca settled here. The islet was renamed Nova Tabarca ("New Tabarca" in both Valencian and Latin). Thus a settlement was created by royal edict on this uninhabited island which the North African corsaries had previously used as a platform for raids on the Levantine coast. On their arrival, the Genoese were first moved to Alicante, where they lived temporarily in the Jesuit School, empty after the expulsion of the Jesuits from Spain. Finally, the Genoese were moved to the island together with a Spanish garrison. The military engineer Fernando Méndez Ras planned a fortified town and walls, bulwarks, warehouses and barracks
La Gomera the subsequent immigration, genetic footprints of the first settlers of the Canary Islands persist in the current inhabitants. Parallelling mtDNA findings (50.1% of U6 and 10.83% of L haplogroups), the largest average Northwest African contribution (42.50%) was found for the samples from La Gomera. According to Flores et al. (2003), genetic drift could be responsible for the contrasting difference in Northwest African ancestry detected with maternal (51% of Northwest African lineages) and paternal markers (0.3–10% of Northwest African lineages) in La Gomera. Alternatively, it could reflect the dramatic way the island was conquered, producing the strongest sexual asymmetry in the