MADRID - From the 15th century on, Spain's Jews were mostly expelled or forced to convert, but today some 20 percent of Spaniards have genes similar to Sephardic Jews, a study has found.

A report in the American Journal of Human Genetics says almost a fifth of Spaniards have genes similar to Sephardic Jews while 11 percent have links to Muslims in North Africa.

"The genetic composition of the current population is the legacy of our diverse cultural and religious past," one of the report's authors, Francesc Calafell, from the evolutionary biology faculty at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, said on Friday.

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