http://http://www.chronicle.gi/readarticle.php?id=000011762&title=The%20Gibraltar%20Chronicle
"YEARS OF CONTACT
A detailed chronological account in an annexe to the affidavit shows that Odyssey’s relations with Spain go back to 1998, when the Partido Popular Government of Jose Maria Aznar was still in power.
The company was first granted permission to work on the Sussex project in May 1999, following discussions with both the Ministry for Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Culture in Madrid.
In the ensuing months, Odyssey carried out work on the Sussex project and took Spanish Navy observers on board its vessel to monitor its activities.
In June 2001 however, the Junta de Andalucia intervened and told Odyssey to cease its activities. The Junta argued that only its officials – and not the central Government in Madrid – could grant permission for Odyssey to work in waters off southern Spain. At the time the Junta’s culture department was headed by Carmen Calvo, who would go on to become Culture Minister under the PSOE Government of Jose Luis Zapatero, a post she held from 2004 until earlier this month.
What followed after June 2001 was four years of political and diplomatic wrangling, further complicated by the dispute over the territorial status of the waters in which the wreck of HMS Sussex was located.
Spain claims those waters as its own. The UK and Gibraltar regard them as international waters.
As the negotiations progressed, the dispute over the status of the waters was largely set aside in order to move ahead with the Sussex project, which was seen by some officials in Madrid as a potential model for the future recovery of Spanish wrecks.
By August 2005, after much work behind the scenes, it looked like the Junta was finally on side.
Odyssey was informed via US diplomatic channels that it was cleared by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs to proceed with the Sussex project and carry out work to confirm the identity of the wreck. One of the conditions was that the company took on board its vessel a Spanish archaeologist to verify the work, a condition Odyssey agreed to.
But just a month later progress stalled again after the Junta raised further objections and refused to appoint the archaeologist because of concerns about the status of the project.
According to the affidavit the situation prompted the intervention of a senior Spanish diplomat with close knowledge of Gibraltar affairs, Jose Pons, Director General for Europe at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs.
Toward the end of November 2005 Sr Pons wrote to a senior official in the Junta noting that the Ministry of Culture and the Junta had set out their position on the project in a letter to the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in June.
Both had agreed to the project so long as certain conditions were met and it was on this basis that Odyssey had received the green light from Madrid.
For Sr Pons, the content of the June letter was “…clear, emphatic and unmistakable.”
“It seems to me a very serious issue in which under no circumstances can we let it be understood that the procedure was incorrectly carried out by us,” he wrote to the Junta official. A copy of the letter is included in the affidavit.
Sr Pons urged the Culture Ministry and the Junta to clarify the terms of their position on the project.
The discussions continued into the following months, with the Junta continuing to raise questions about the archaeological aspects of Odyssey’s proposals.
According to the affidavit even Geoff Hoon, UK Minister for Europe at the time, intervened and wrote to Manuel Chaves, President of the Junta, setting out Britain’s position on the project.
The company provided additional information in response to the Junta’s queries and by March 2007 an agreement on the Sussex project was finally reached.
By this time though, Odyssey’s attention was elsewhere: while everyone was busy discussing the Sussex project, the company had found a colonial era wreck in international waters of the Atlantic. It was code-named the Black Swan.
In early April a small sample of items from the wreck was flown from Gibraltar to Florida on a private jet. It was the physical evidence needed by the company to secure legal rights over the site and prevent anyone else from working there.
In the ensuing weeks the company’s vessel Odyssey Explorer was at work in international waters in the Atlantic Ocean, about 33 nautical miles off Faro.
Odyssey has not identified the name of the wreck but historical documents show that this spot was close to where a Spanish frigate called the Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes was sunk by English warships in 1804. The Mercedes was carrying over a million silver coins at the time.
The Odyssey Explorer arrived back in Gibraltar on May 12.
On May 17, a chartered Boeing 757 flew from the Rock to the US carrying 17 tonnes of treasure, and in the process ignited a major row that has yet to be resolved."
The mention of the Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes is the first indication that the Black Swan shipwreck might not be that of the Merchant Royal, as many have speculated. The Merchant Royal has been an admitted quest of Odyssey and they have been sighted doing survey work in the general area that the Merchant Royal was said to have gone down.
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
