HUGE UFO OVER THE N.E. SPAIN
Terrassa Sabadell Barcelona 1985
This report is a fairly detailed compilation of the information obtained from various sources, on an important case of UFO observation — radar and visual — in the area of Terrassa and Sabadell, which occurred on the night of November 29 to 30, 1985. .
Today, one of the main tests of the real existence of UFOs is radar detection, since it allows us to eliminate possible identification errors or confusion. We have a palpable example of this in the present case.
Development of events
The events occurred approximately in the chronological manner described below.
The observation began around 9:30 p.m.
Friday, November 29, when a sergeant and a
agent of the Municipal Police of Terrassa
They saw a light of appreciable size that
found static in the sky near the vertical
of this population. Numerous people from the
region were also able to observe the phenomenon, and
some notified the authorities.
Among the visual witnesses were two men who, from the town of Sant Quirze del Vallès, indicated that with the naked eye only a powerful bluish-white light could be seen, but that through binoculars an elongated body could be clearly seen, its luminosity being brighter. strong and intense in the center and much less at the ends. These witnesses, the following night, looked at the sky again at the same time, no longer noticing the aforementioned light, which ruled out that it could be a star or the renowned Halley’s Comet, since at first they believed that it was a phenomenon astronomical of this type.
Shortly afterwards, the Municipal Police of Terrassa called the Barcelona Urban Police, to whom they reported the event. The latter, around 10:30 p.m., notified the Air Traffic Control Center of Barcelona’s El Prat Airport that a UFO sighting was taking place by the population of Terrassa. Service controllers did not observe anything abnormal on the radar screens.
To better check this, they turned off the MIT device (a fixed echo canceller) that was in operation. Then they saw on the screen “a fixed echo somewhat to the north of Terrassa”, in the shape of a wide spot and with unusual characteristics. Its size was slightly greater than 200 meters, but since it did not move, they believed that it could be caused by the mountainous terrain of the area (Sant Llorenç-La Mola mountain, 1,100 meters high).
The radar used that captured the echo is an “ASR-7”, of the so-called approach (GCA) type. primary, which is located on the runways of El Prat airport. It is a TAR radar (terminal area radar) that works at UHF frequency, has a maximum range of about 110 kilometers and reports only the distance to the echo and its direction, and cannot calculate altitudes because it is planar. In the incident area, this radar detects aircraft flying between 600 and 12,000 meters high.
Simultaneously, the Barcelona Urban Police informed TV3 (Catalan Television) of the presence of the possible UFO, so a mobile service team immediately traveled to Terrassa where, in the company of the town’s Municipal Police, they managed to film BETA video. CAM the powerful light that was static in the sky and that had an apparent size three or four times larger than normal stars. The TV3 team tried to film some stars to compare them in the light, but they could not do so due to the low light intensity that they emitted and which the camera could not capture. Meanwhile, the air traffic controllers of El Prat
They directed two or three commercial planes to the area of Sabadell and Terrassa. They were probably aircraft from the Iberia company: a DC-9, flight IB-799, a Boeing, flight IB-899 and a DC-9, flight IB-901, which were heading from Barcelona to Madrid.
The pilots of these planes reported that they observed absolutely nothing strange in that area. The Control Center, using its own instruments and those carried by the aforementioned airplanes, checked the meteorological conditions at this time, with the following results:
- North wind, about 8 or 10 knots (15 to 18 km/hour),
clear atmosphere, excellent visibility, cold (less than 15°),
completely clear and starry sky.
- — standard temperature gradient and slightly
It was also found that there were no temperature inversions and that there were no probe balloons in the area.
At around 1:30 a.m. on November 30, an Iberia Boeing 727 plane, flight IB-064, from Tenerife (Canary Archipelago), was near Sitges, on the southwest coast of Barcelona, flying at about 2,000 meters high and heading to the El Prat airport. The Control Center notified the pilots to look about 10° to their left and if they saw anything to report it. Shortly after, the pilots reported that to the northwest of Sabadell they were observing a soft, non-bright blue light in the shape of a line, literally defining the phenomenon as “a chicken farm, that is, a narrow and elongated light of bluish white color, with windows or compartments, and on the far left there is a somewhat orange flashing point of light. The location of this light coincided with the echo over Terrassa. Minutes later, the pilots indicated that they saw “a slight movement to the right of the light, which gives the sensation of approaching.”
The largest UFO in history
At approximately 04:24 hours, on the radar screen of the Control Center “a mobile and very powerful primary echo suddenly appears about 4 miles [about 7.4 km] north of the city from Sabadell, which moves with a heading of 180° [South] for a minute and a half at a speed calculated at about 50 knots [about 90 km/hour]». This echo, according to the meticulous calculations carried out, was extremely large, since it had a length from end to end of about 5 miles, that is, about 9 kilometers, with its width being almost negligible. At a given moment, approximately 50 seconds after capturing the monstrous echo, another echo of dimensions similar to a fighter plane [about 20 meters] was detached from it at its right end and moved with a heading of 150° [Southeast ] at an estimated speed of 900 km/hour for about 15 seconds and disappeared.
After a minute and a half of viewing it on the radar, the object of such enormous size “also suddenly disappeared” from the screens. It should be noted that this enormous object was oriented with one end to the East and the other to the West, presenting the widest face of its structure in its movement towards the South.
During the detection time, “it was verified and confirmed that the great echo was really moving at a very slow speed, practically that of an ultralight, since compared to those developed by normal airplanes and light aircraft, it was much slower.” ». The controllers turned on the MTI device and the echo continued to appear on the site without being automatically removed from the screen, which meant that
moved, traveling approximately 2,250 meters, which brought it closer to about 5.2 km north of Sabadell. The small echo that had broken away, during its 15 seconds of flight, traveled about 4 km and disappeared northwest of Sabadell.
Apparently the El Prat Control Center could not determine the flight altitude of the great echo and the small one that was released from it, although due to the orography of the terrain where the event took place, the altitude must have been greater than 1,000 or 1,500 meters. As for the fixed echo, it had to be several thousand meters above sea level. The altitudes at which the three echoes were found were calculated by military radars, which also detected them, and are recorded in the official reports of the event. There is also no news about the vision of the last two radar echoes by witnesses located on the ground.
More details of the case
Around 4:31 a.m., a C-212 plane, Aviocar, of the postal service — flight 302 — took off from the El Prat airport towards Madrid, transporting mail and the first newspapers of the day. The controllers made the plane turn over the sea and follow a different route from the normal one over Sabadell and Terrassa, since about ten minutes earlier they had detected in that area the displacement of the two unknown echoes already mentioned, and which could cause an aerial collision , and they reported these events to the pilots of the postal plane. Minutes later, when the plane was over the coast near Castelldefels, the pilots notified the Control Center that they were flying at an altitude of 1,500 meters and that they were observing, about 20 miles to their right (Terrassa and Sabadell area), a white luminous glow. very powerful in the sky, which flashed for 2 or 3 seconds, then remained static and then a new flash for another two or three seconds in a zig-zag pattern and disappeared. A detail of great surprise to the air traffic controllers was the fact that the unknown object or lights could only be seen from a very specific position on the coast or sea, southwest of Barcelona, with the airplane pilots agreeing to point out the location of the phenomenon towards the area of Terrassa and Sabadell. On the other hand, the crew members of the planes that flew over said towns claimed not to observe anything in the aforementioned place.
The luminous object that gave a fixed echo on the radar
remained in the area until approximately
6 in the morning, according to one of the consulting sources.
Although the departure of one or two combat aircraft from the Zaragoza base was mentioned, to attempt to identify the objects captured by civil and military radars, it is not possible to confirm this detail. There are several reasons why said planes did not leave: a) the echoes did not penetrate Spanish airspace from outside, since they were already inside it; b) the detection of the two moving echoes was very brief; c) due to the enormous size of one of the echoes, it was completely ruled out that it could be a hostile plane or a conventional aircraft; and d) it seems that for quite some time now Spanish military planes have “gone on alert” on very rare occasions. In any case, whether they took off or not, there are serious elements in decisions of this nature.
Other sources of information indicated that the tapes recording the conversations between the pilots and air traffic controllers were already in the possession of the Ministry of Defense for study. It can be stated that neither these tapes nor their transcription were requested by the military authorities. It is true, however, that the aforementioned Ministry, through the Air Force, immediately began the official investigation of the events that occurred that night, without being able to find an explanation for them.
The radar of the El Prat Air Control Center was verified and did not have defects, working correctly. Furthermore, the fact that the same echoes were captured by the military radars simultaneously with the civil ones, which have different operating characteristics than that of El Prat, indicates that the possibility of technical anomalies of any kind that could have been excluded must be excluded. cause the aforementioned detections. The echoes corresponded, without a doubt, to completely solid and material objects. In the radar system that detected the echoes from Barcelona, there is a device to record on video the images that appear on the screens, but in this case the UFOs were not recorded.
Comments
The characteristics presented by the immense echo must be classified as exceptional. As already indicated, its total length was calculated at about 9,000 meters, and there is no aerial vehicle with similar dimensions in the world. Its horizontal speed is out of the ordinary for large aircraft, since at 90 km/hour a plane cannot remain stable in the air in any way and has to fall towards the ground. Another detail of interest is that said object presented a very wide face in its movement, 9,000 meters long, which must have offered great resistance to the air as it moved towards the South. A new mystery about this echo that has not been explained is its sudden appearance and disappearance from the radar screen, since it did not do so on the periphery as would be normal.
The facts of this case are extraordinary and seem to indicate that we are faced with a phenomenon that must be classified as real UFOs, fundamentally due to the category and credibility of the main source of information that has provided the data on this event.
There are some interesting data regarding the case that, at the moment, cannot be made public and must be kept completely confidential for reasons that are easy to assume and that are related to the paragraph that appears below.
Due to the nature of the events, it is logical that the military authorities, once they have obtained the main elements that make up the incident, have classified it as “reserved matter” and try to ensure that there is no publicity or public comments on the matter, due to the existence of information that affect Spanish defense and security.
Joan Plana i Crivillen
EDITOR’S NOTE
This article, written by our partner Joan Plana, had already been published in two magazines on the UFO topic: “Cuadernos de Ufología” of Santander, first period, number 15, March 1986, and by the “Flying Saucer Review” of London , volume 32, number 1, December 1986. But since both publications can hardly be had by the CEl member and, furthermore, since it is an exceptional event, unique in the world, we wanted to inaugurate the first issue of Papers d’ UFOs with this case, so that Catalan readers can read it in a publication published in Catalonia.
As will be remembered, the case was so important as it was seen by thousands of people throughout the region that the Barcelona press talked about it. In our archive there are clippings from: Avui, La Vanguardia, El Periódico (November 30) and La Vanguardia and El Periódico (December 1). In this last newspaper a reproduction of an image of the video filming that TV3 offered on the same day the 30th at night was published, with the caption: “Imatge real. Electronic amplification”, in which a spot of white light is seen in the black sky The Diario de Sabadell also spoke about the case on December 3, as well as Spanish National Radio, a station in Barcelona, and Spanish Television Circuit Català, on November 30.
Regarding the extraordinary size of the UFO, it reminds us of the astronomical observations of the last century of gigantic objects moving on or near the Moon, published in scientific journals and which Charles Fort collected in his books.
Two UFOs were seen last night over the Serra de Collcerola
Sources from the Urban Police reported that around 9:30 p.m.
hours last night two unidentified flying objects were seen
on the Serra de Collcerola, at the height of Rubí. The two objects emitted blue luminous flashes. One was static while the other evolved until it disappeared. The control of
Barcelona air traffic confirmed that the two objects had
appeared on radar screens and were visible from the ground.
However, they added that they passed over the place
some planes coming from Barcelona airport, without
The pilots will appreciate no object.
La Vanguardia Saturday, November 30, 1985 page 23
The UFOs seen in Barcelona on Friday are not recognized by astronomers
The two unidentified flying objects that appeared last Friday over Barcelona were seen around four-thirty in the morning by the crew of a plane flying the Madrid-Barcelona postal service, according to sources from the air traffic control service of the city. El Prat airport. The UFOs were not seen by the astronomical observatories of Catalonia, which believe that the vision could be a probe balloon.
However, that is not the opinion of the numerous Barcelonans who were able to observe them with the naked eye from nine thirty at night. At first glance, the two objects were located above the Barcelona town of Terrassa, but it is very difficult to locate them exactly, since neither the exact distances nor the heights were known. The postal service plane that sighted them was also unable to determine the exact position of the two objects, which disappeared from the air traffic control service’s radar shortly after four-thirty in the morning. Officially, “there is no reliable information about what they could be.”
The two UFOs were seen for the first time at half past nine on Friday night, over the Collcerola mountain range. The objects, which emitted blue luminous flashes, were not recognized by the most important astronomical observatories in Catalonia, such as the Fabra observatory and the Aster astronomical groups, in Sabadell.
La Vanguardia Sunday, December 1, 1985 page 35
