MADRID (AP) _ Spain has rejected the Peruvian claim to a huge treasure recovered from the wreck of a ship that had left from Lima’s port more than 200 years ago.
Spain recovered the nearly 600,000 coins mostly silver but a few made of gold on Saturday after they were flown to Madrid from Tampa’s McDill Air Force Base.
That marked the culmination of a five-year court battle with a Florida deep-sea exploration firm, Odyssey, which found the wreck of the Spanish frigate Nuestra Senora de las Mercedes in 2007.
Spain’s education, culture and sports minister, Jose Ignacio Wert, told a packed news conference Monday that the final U.S. court ruling stated that the ship and its contents belonged to Spain.
None of the treasure itself was displayed at the news conference.
