Interesting and straight to the point: that can be said of this new paper. That and that a number of high profile geneticists have co-authored it (Olivieri, Behar, Achilli, Torroni and Salas). The only less known name is in fact that of the lead author:
Alberto Gómez Carballa, Genetic Continuity in the Franco-Cantabrian Region: New Clues from Autochthonous Mitogenomes. PLoS ONE 2012. Open access.
The finding here is that along with many H subclades and probably V, which have been discussed in older studies, the lineage HV4a1a seems to have originated in the Franco-Cantabrian region, with branches to North-West Europe and, secondarily, South Italy, as can be seen in fig. 1:
Notice that the territory under French jurisdiction has been sampled much more sparsely than that under Spanish rule. This surely explains that most of the apparent diversity is located in the Cantabrian strip and not in Gascony, Occitania or otherwise in French territory.
Number of known basal subclades of HV4a1a per Upper Paleolithic province:
- Franco Cantabrian region: 9.5
- Iberian province: 3
- NW Europe: 3
- Italy: 0.5
Or maybe you prefer the representation in fig. 2:
HV4 overall may have originated in or near Eastern Europe however, where most of the basal diversity seems to be.