On stormy days, the Underwater Archeology Center (CAS) in Cádiz recalls a ship from the early 20th century at the mercy of the waves. The windows of the old spa, located on the beach of La Caleta, creak with the wind and the rough sea recalls tragedies of the past. Only as far as the eye can see in that area there are 87 sunken wrecks from all eras, 19 archaeologically located and the rest known thanks to documentation. If the radius is extended to the Gulf of Cádiz, the figure rises to “about 2,000,” estimates Milagros Alzaga, head of the CAS. The looting committed by the Odyssey company in only one of them, the Our Lady of the Mercedes14 years ago, it has made it possible for the rest of the underwater sites to benefit, at least, from a legal shield that has put Spain at the forefront of its protection and that pushes new scientific challenges.
“We have become an example and the world looks to us as a reference,” sums up Mariano Aznar, professor of Public International Law and expert in the field. Aznar is aware of the bittersweet of his reflection. To get to this point, Spain managed to win the litigation before the US Justice in Florida courts, in February 2012, which recognized “Spanish ownership” of the 500,000 plundered silver and gold coins. However, the Provincial Court of Cádiz has been forced, last July, to let the case against Odyssey die, which had to judge its destruction of the site, before the prescription of most crimes, not without acknowledging its “confusion” and “anger” at the unusual processing, according to his order. “The case is a bit sad, but if we see the positive side, it has been a wake-up call for everyone,” sums up the head of CAS, a center dependent on the Andalusian Institute of Historical Heritage (IAPH).
For Odyssey Marine Exploration, then directed by Greg Stemm, the history of the Mercedes, a Spanish ship carrying 275 people, sunk by the English off the coast of the Algarve (Portugal) in October 1804 and which ended up leading to the Spanish-French defeat of Trafalgar (1805). Nor did it escape the conflicts of powers between institutions and the existing legal gaps in Spain. “They took advantage of the weakness of the Administration,” Aznar reasons, referring to those responsible for both the ship Odyssey Explorer, as from Louisa, another vessel chartered by another American company to plunder the coast of Cádiz in 2004.
After two years of meetings and discussions, the Green Book of the Underwater Heritage Protection Plan, published in the summer of 2010, put much of that lack of coordination behind. “This plan has meant support for the autonomous communities, which did not have an underwater archaeological chart,” says Alzaga. Legally, the sum of forces set in motion a cascade of regulatory reinforcements. In the autonomous case, each community has “aligned itself even more” with the 2001 Unesco Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage. State maritime navigation law has already incorporated that salvage rules are not applicable to underwater archeology. And the change has not even concluded yet: the amendment to the 1985 Spanish Historical Heritage Law —announced last June— will include the need for supervision by the Ministry of Culture of any extraction of a cultural asset from the seabed.
More awareness, less digging
Protection, coordination and knowledge have also flowed to the State security forces and bodies. The Navy now has a much more active role in this task. In addition, the incorporation of the Integrated External Surveillance System – a network of cameras and sensors in the Strait and the Canary Islands to control immigration and drug trafficking – has shielded a large part of the Gulf of Cádiz, where the higher concentration of sunken wrecks susceptible to protection. “The professionalism now is spectacular,” says the professor.
If he caso Odyssey has now revived in the collective imagination has not only been due to the filing of the judicial case, but thanks to The Fortune, the series by director Alejandro Amenábar that has brought the story to television, from The Black Swan’s Treasure, the comic by Paco Roca. But from that event, which lasted for years, there remains a trace of awareness. Few are the local divers who dare to plunder parts of the seabed and many citizens who “call and warn if they see something strange,” explains Alzaga. “Since then, people see the underwater heritage as something of their own that cannot be allowed to be traded with it,” says the head of the CAS. However, Aznar believes that more can still be done in education: “You have to make the kids see that this is the largest museum in the world. Perhaps, for economic and technological reasons, we cannot access it, but the time will come when it will be possible. You only want what is known and then we can force our political class to be more proactive. “
And there is more room for improvement. The archaeologist Javier Noriega and his company Nerea – born from the University of Malaga, came to be awarded by the EU in 2009 for being socially responsible – appeared as a private prosecution in the case that has now died in the Spanish courts. The specialist acknowledges his disappointment with what was experienced in the instruction, but prefers to focus on the future with studies that focus precisely on what has remained without condemnation: underwater sites as places of memory and war tombs. Last week, Noriega defended this vision at Cyanis, the first edition of an international Ibero-American congress on underwater heritage, which was held in Cádiz.
Each shipwreck, whether due to battles, inclement seas or accidents, tends to hide behind it dozens of deaths. It was something that Odyssey did not take into account when it smashed and plundered the Mercedes “Without modesty or respect”, as Alzaga recalls about what was also one of the defense lines of Spain in the trial in the United States. If the case had not died in the Spanish courts, Aznar believes that it would also have been one of the key lines of argument. Beyond these legal implications, Noriega defends the use of underwater archeology with that memorialist approach, as a way of “giving identity to people, reconstructing their history.”
The CAS chief knows that perspective well. After some works in the Port of Cádiz in 2012, three sunken ships from the 16th to the 18th centuries were found. She managed to identify the Little Vassalla, the first wreck to sink by the English pirate Drake, in 1587, during his attack on the city. In those surveys of the three sunken ships, the remains of the skull of a woman and the femur of a man were also located, which are still being studied in depth to find out aspects of daily life in the 16th century. Since that campaign, the CAS has not carried out new surveys, although it has made documentation visits to deposits.
Noriega defends the need to carry out more excavations like these under the sea and puts the focus on the ships of the battle of Trafalgar, since some of them are still great unknown. “We need to investigate, intervene, conserve and publish on more wrecks to shed light on the history of these people who died,” says the researcher. For the archaeologist, after the disappointment that the looting of the Mercedes go unpunished, it would be an act of almost poetic justice, a way in which “a problem becomes an opportunity.”