Pedro Pascal’s Ethnicity and Family Roots

Escape from Chile

Both parents opposed the regime. His father, a doctor, had treated a wounded dissident who was later arrested, tortured and forced to give the regime a list of names that included Dr. Balmaceda. When men came looking for him at his hospital, he slipped out the back, and the parents went into hiding while an aunt took in Pedro and his older sister.^[1][2]

Months later the parents climbed the wall of the Venezuelan embassy in Santiago during a change of guards and received asylum. The family left Chile when Pedro was nine months old, spent some time in Denmark and then moved to San Antonio, where his father found work as a physician.^[1][2]

Father’s side

The Spanish line runs through his father’s mother, Juana Riera Bauzá. Pascal has said that his grandmother came from Mallorca and his grandfather was Basque.^[3] A genealogical study by Gonzalo A. Luengo of the Chilean Institute of Genealogical Research, built on Pascal’s birth certificate and parish records from Santiago, identified her as the sister of Fernando Riera, who coached Chile to third place at the 1962 World Cup on home soil.^[4] According to the Basque newspaper Deia, José Balmaceda told the Chilean daily Las Últimas Noticias that two of his son’s four great-grandparents on the paternal side came from the Basque Country.^[5]

Pascal first worked in Hollywood under his father’s surname and was credited as Pedro Balmaceda in early roles such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer.^[1]

Mother’s side

Verónica Pascal raised her children in Texas and California and supported her son’s love of acting. She found him a performing arts high school in Orange County and, through a friend, sent him to see Angels in America, the play that convinced him to become an actor.^[1][2] A few years after she was allowed to return to Chile, she died, when Pedro was 24. In her honor he changed his professional surname from Balmaceda to Pascal.^[1][2]

Older Chilean roots

The same genealogical study traces Pascal’s ancestry in Chile back to Mateo de Toro Zambrano, who presided over the country’s first government junta in 1810, and to a great-grandfather born in Tacna, a city that is part of Peru today. According to Luengo, many earlier ancestors were born in Spain, which he calls typical for Chileans.^[4]