Under American law I technically qualify as Hispanic even though I have absolutely no ethnic Spanish ancestry in the last 500 years. The reason for this is that the law permits you to self-identify as Hispanic if you have "ancestry originating in the Spanish Empire." Which means if you have an ancestor who ever lived under the flag of Spain, even if living under the flag of Spain meant being an ethnic Frenchman in Biloxi, Mississippi, you qualify to call yourself "Hispanic" with ancestry from "Spain" under current law and practice.

I have ethnic French ancestry along the Gulf Coast going back to the founding of Colonial Louisiana, and then further back through essentially the founding of Quebec and back to France in the 1500s. One of my ancestors was named Charles Orbanne DeMouy. He was a Frenchman. The DeMouy brothers (and Charles Orbanne was a descendant of them) were two tax collectors working for the French government, one was sent to New Orleans and one to Mobile.