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Case · C-114

Talavera la Real 1976: the sentries' gunshots and a file without the report

Talavera la Real Air Base, Badajoz, Extremadura · Spain · Nov 12, 1976

On land Military witnesses

Unexplained

What happened
According to accounts published since at least November 1977, when J. J. Benítez wrote about it in the magazine “Mundo Desconocido” (as recalled by a letter kept in the file), on the night of November 12, 1976, some soldiers on guard at the Talavera la Real air base heard noises, saw an unusual light and a luminous figure about three meters tall, at which they fired before it disappeared. The Air Force file, declassified on November 26, 1996, does not contain an original report: it starts from a 1982 note by the defense attaché in Caracas about an article in the Diario de Caracas of December 1981 and records that the General Staff had no record of the event. A 1985 letter from the Ministry stated that an investigating judge had been appointed to clarify the facts (giving, however, the date of December 12, 1976), but his report has not been found. Some articles describe the episode as confirmed by the declassified documents, but the file documents above all the absence of records.
Proposed explanation
The writer J. J. Benítez presents it as an encounter with a non-human being. The researcher Vicente Juan Ballester, who took part in the declassification of the files in the 1990s, told El Mundo that the base command did not treat the episode as an OVNI case and that it has the hallmarks of a hallucinatory episode aggravated by fear and collective hysteria; according to the same article, the search the next day found neither shell casings nor bullet impacts on the wall.
Official investigation
Ejército del Aire (Mando Operativo Aéreo, Intelligence Section; file declassified in 1996)
Words of the document
no existe constancia del hecho en el EMA

Official documents

  1. Avistamiento de fenómenos extraños en la base aérea de Talavera (Badajoz): 12 de Noviembre de 1976 (expediente 761112) · Ejército del Aire – Mando Operativo Aéreo, Estado Mayor, Sección de Inteligencia · 1982

Sources

  1. El Mundo, “¿Extraterrestres en la base aérea?” (special “La España de los ovnis,” 2010) (press)
  2. Le Petit Journal Madrid, “OVNIs en Espagne: des affaires qui rivalisent avec les dossiers secrets du Pentagone” (press)
  3. Wikipedia – UFO sightings in Spain (other)

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