Reports of repeated landings in the mining landscape near Gallarta, Biscay, attracted newspaper coverage and a Spanish military inquiry in 1977. The file preserves two different kinds of claim: a very brief daytime sighting reported by one man, and a series of nocturnal landings and conversations described by his father-in-law. A later independent investigation, also enclosed in the released dossier, attributed many supposed landing marks to excavation machinery and concluded that the landing story was fabricated.
These components should be assessed separately. An ordinary origin for ground marks undermines their use as physical evidence, but it does not automatically identify a different light or object reportedly seen in the sky. The released expediente 770213 is valuable precisely because it contains the original inquiry, critical military comments and the later challenge to the claims, rather than a single official endorsement.
Publicity and the first inquiry
The military documents identify a report by journalist Juan José Benítez in La Gaceta del Norte of 24 March 1977 as a trigger for the inquiry. A letter of 11 April forwarded graphics and the journalist’s description. Subsequent correspondence requested that information be prepared under the reporting instructions then in force, with statements and a personal assessment by the regional command.
The reporting officer contacted the journalist for witness details and interviewed the two men. Their relationship matters: the son-in-law’s account was not an independent observation of all the father-in-law’s alleged landings. The military summary itself distinguishes one daylight observation from the repeated encounters. Accounts which simply add the two men together as witnesses to a series of landings obscure that distinction.
The brief daytime sighting
The son-in-law’s statement describes an object rising vertically at great apparent speed without sound. He compared its shape with a flattened mushroom and estimated a diameter of twenty to twenty-five metres, using a supposed range of about a kilometre. He said the whole view lasted about a second. Those size and range values were witness estimates, not independent measurements.
He described a brilliant surrounding halo which he thought could be sunlight reflected from the object. A short-lived thread-like trace was also reported. His interpretation involving displaced air did not establish what produced that appearance. His certainty that it was neither an aeroplane nor a balloon likewise records his judgement, without supplying a tracked trajectory or a photograph.
The file’s cover associates the case with 13 February 1977, but a regional assessment gives a differing February date for this short sighting. The article retains the broader February-to-April period for the group of claims rather than imposing a precise common date on every episode. The year is supported throughout; later investigation and release dates do not belong in the incident-year filter.
The reported landings and conversations
The father-in-law’s military interview, described as lasting around two and a half hours, presents five appearances, the first in mid-February and the last on 29 April. The earlier newspaper account had concerned four. The fifth was said to have occurred after the original publicity. These are stages in the record of one witness’s claims, not five independently documented aircraft arrivals.
For the first night he described being called by name, hearing a humming sound and going towards a clearing. He said a disc balanced while extending and retracting supports before settling on the ground. Two suited figures supposedly emerged through a sliding door, reassured him and said they had to leave because they had been detected. The report attributes these words and actions to the witness.
In the second episode he described a larger disc and different figures who allegedly warned that Earth’s orbit and inclination were in danger. A third included a small tracked, tank-like device which appeared to test or collect material beneath the disc. He claimed to have touched the object’s scaled-looking surface and shaken hands with beings whose hands felt extremely cold. The file does not provide an independently examined material sample or a physical record of that contact.
The fourth alleged landing offered fewer distinctive actions. The final episode was placed at about 23:00 on 29 April, with three figures said to have appeared briefly before leaving. The article does not reproduce the home’s location or directions through the private residential area. Detailed claims of machinery, dialogue and physical contact remain claims even when they are recorded in a government file.
The ground marks and military reservations
The reporting officer found numerous impressions of different shapes in the area. Rain and the passage of large numbers of curious visitors had disturbed them. He explicitly said they did not clarify whether the stories could be confirmed. At the area associated with the latest alleged landing he found no corresponding support or track impressions. A claimed tank-like vehicle’s marks were no longer available for examination.
A regional command assessment dated 4 August 1977 questioned the reliability of the information. It stressed the small number of related witnesses and the contrast between a very short distant daylight view and the level of detail claimed. Some remarks concerned a witness’s apparent mental state; those administrative impressions do not justify a retrospective medical diagnosis. The documentary point is that the command did not accept the file as reliable confirmation of the reported landings.
This position also limits the significance of official letterheads and classification stamps. The military organisation received and investigated information without thereby certifying the events. Documents containing extraordinary allegations are evidence that those allegations were reported. Whether their content was corroborated has to be established from the actual inquiry and its conclusions.
The independent investigation enclosed in 1979
A report submitted through Félix Ares de Blas and the STENDEK consultants, dated 1 September 1979, described repeated interviews and changing versions of the landing accounts. It distinguished the brief daytime sighting from the nocturnal claims rather than using it as corroboration for them.
Its investigators said an excavator operator acknowledged producing marks while removing stones, before the UFO publicity. They reported matching some impressions and spacing to the machine’s supports and bucket work. They also cited frequently passing lorries whose drivers reported no unusual events. On that basis, and the account’s contradictions, they concluded that the landing story was fraudulent. The report did not offer a demonstrated identification for the separate daytime sighting.
The military acknowledged receipt and forwarded the study for consideration. Its presence in the dossier preserves a substantive challenge to the claims; it is not an independent laboratory certification of every conclusion. The distinction between the machinery evidence and the authors’ broader judgement about fabrication is retained here.
Map area, release and outcome
Approximate map area: the pin at 43.321°N, 3.073°W is a rounded GeoNames reference for Gallarta town. It deliberately does not locate a witness’s house or identify a surviving landing site. The historical mining terrain described in the file should not be treated as a current visitor attraction or permission to enter private land.
The declassification review is dated 7 January 1995 and its release endorsement 18 January. Those dates belong to publication of the old file, not to new sightings. The case is assessed as Possibly Explained: ordinary machinery was identified by later investigators as the source of many marks, and fabrication was their proposed explanation for the landing narratives. That assessment does not identify the separate daytime object or establish that every reported experience was reconstructed.
Source trail: Biblioteca Virtual de Defensa, expediente 770213, ninety-three physical PDF pages, particularly the government summary pages 2–5; original inquiry pages 15–21; regional assessment pages 24–25; independent study pages 61–91, especially 87–90; and covering correspondence pages 51–52 and 92. The lead image reproduces the government summary under the catalogue’s CC BY 4.0 licence, rather than third-party newspaper photographs. Related reading: UFO / UAP / USO. Sources checked 13 November 2026.