ManyToOne Empty Table Exception

I have the following entities:

@ Entity
@ Table(“table_x”)
public class X{

@ Id
@ GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.IDENTITY)
private Long id;

@ ManyToOne
private Y y;
}

@ Entity
@ Table(“table_y”)
public class Y{
@ Id
@ GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.IDENTITY)
private Long id;

}

and a repository

@ Repository
public interface XRepository extends JpaRepository<X, Long>, JpaSpecificationExecutor{
@ Query(value= “select x.* from X x where x.y in :yList”)
List getX(List yList);
}

when trying to call getX from XRepository while table_y is empty, it throws:
Method threw ‘org.springframework.dao.InvalidDataAccessResourceUsageException’ exception.

could not extract ResultSet; SQL [n/a]

if table_y has records in the database, everything works fine