BRANCA DIAS CORONEL, ABRAHAM SENIOR AND ISAAC ABOAB IIClaudio de Oliveira *I am investigating the relationship between the Portuguese Marrana Branca Dias Coronel and Abraham Senior and Isaac Aboab II, who were the last great rabbis in Spain before the expulsion of the Jews in 1492.Abraham Senior, responsible for collecting taxes for the kingdom, was pressured to convert to Catholicism by the Catholic kings Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabel of Castile. The converted rabbi was named Fernão Peres Coronel.Some family members did not accept the conversion and fled to several countries, including neighboring Portugal.This is what Isaac Aboab II did when he headed a delegation of 30 distinguished members of the community and received authorization from King D. João II for around 100,000 Spanish Jews to enter Portugal.After paying high fees, 30 families were housed in Porto, including Isaac Aboab II, who died seven months later, in 1493, at the age of 60.His son, also rabbi Abraham Aboab, had to convert to Catholicism in 1497, when Dom Manuel I ascended the throne and married a daughter of Spanish kings. Abraham Aboab was renamed Duarte Dias.Several other Spanish Jewish families were housed in cities near Porto, in northern Portugal, such as Braga and Viana do Castelo, where Branca Dias Coronel was born in 1514.According to James Boyajian, in his book, “Portuguese bankers in the court of Spain, 1626-1650”, one of Duarte Dias' children and Isaac Aboab II's grandchildren was Bento Dias, wealthy cousin of Branca Dias Coronel, tax collector in Pernambuco and partner of her husband Diogo Fernandes at sugar cane mill Camaragibe. Soon Branca Dias was the grandniece of the so-called "last Goan of Castile", the religious leader Isaac Aboab II.Especially after 1492, the Aboab family split into several into several family branches, as noted in the Jewish Encyclopedia. And one of these tribes is the Aboab y Coronel family, which indicates the interdependence of the families of the last two rabbis in Spain. And as a member of these two families, Branca Dias Coronel.Genealologist Cândido Pinheiro Koren de Lima hypothesizes in his book about Branca Dias Coronel and Abraham Sr. that the latter was her great-grandfather. Koren de Lima, to support his thesis, uses the surname Branca Dias Coronel, according to the testimony of his daughter Andreza Jorge, who was arrested in 1593 while visiting the Holy Office in Pernambuco after being denounced togethet her sister Brites Fernandes and a half -sister Briolanja Fernandes for practicing Judaism.It is common for Sephardic Jews to name their children after their deceased ancestors. According to testimony from the Lisbon Inquisition, Branca Dias' mother was called Violante Dias, both of them detained in Estaus in 1543 for Judaism. And Branca Dias' grandmother was also called Branca Dias. Abraham Senior's wife, possibly Branca Dias' great-grandmother, was called Violante Cabrera. Branca Dias' mother, Violante Dias, would therefore have the same name as her grandmother.Branca Dias Coronel is one of the most famous crypto-Jews in colonial Brazil, who arrived in Olinda with her 7 children around 1550, where her husband Diogo Fernandes, also a newly born Christian in Porto, was already living in Porto. The couple are the founders of America's first unofficial public synagogue on their sugar cane mill, Camaragibe.The first official synagogue in America is Kahal Zur Israel, founded in Recife in 1637. Their rabbi was Isaac Aboab da Fonseca, a cultured man born in Castro Daire, Portugal, who emigrated to Amsterdam with his family as a child. There he returned to Judaism and became a rabbi. He came to Brazil during Dutch rule. Isaac Aboab da Fonseca was the great-grandson of Isaac Aboab II and, therefore, related to Branca Dias Coronel and Bento Dias.I will continue researching Branca Dias Coronel's kinship relationships with Abraham Senior and Isaac Aboab II and looking for bibliographies and documentation. Thanks to anyone who can give tips for these connections.* Journalist, cartoonist and grandson of Branca Dias Coronel from his 17th generation.