Sunken treasure The battle to raise the San José

A Spanish galleon that was sunk in the 18th century has been at the centre of a dispute over who has rights to the wreck and its estimated $17bn in booty

- Luke Taylor 

Since the Colombian navy discovered the final resting place of the Spanish galleon San José in 2015, its location has remained a state secret, the wreck - and its precious cargo - left deep under the waters of the Caribbean.

Efforts to conserve the ship and recover its cargo have been caught up in a string of international legal disputes, with Colombia, Spain, Bolivian Indigenous groups and a US salvage company laying claim to the wreck.

The gold, silver and emeralds on board are thought to be worth as much as $17bn. When Colombia tried to auction off part of the bounty to fund the colossal costs of recovering the ship, Unesco and the country's high courts intervened.

But eight years after the discovery, officials now say they are pushing politics to one side and could begin lifting artefacts from the "holy grail of shipwrecks" as soon as April.

"There has been this persistent view of the galleon as a treasure trove. We want to turn the page on that," Alhena Caicedo, director of the Colombian Institute of Anthropology and History, said. "We aren't thinking about treasure. We're thinking about how to access the historical and archeological information at the site."

The San José was returning to Europe with treasures to help fund the war of the Spanish succession when it was sunk by a British squadron in 1708, close to the Caribbean port city of Cartagena. Historians say the wreck could help reveal much about the Spanish empire at the height of its power - and the shared, overlapping histories of Europe and Latin America.

Eventually, Caicedo's team hopes to raise the wreck itself, and put it on display in a custom-built museum. But as exploration continues at the site, the scale and complexity of the challenge is coming into focus.