Shortly after dawn on 23 November 1993, five members of Spain’s EVA 10 air-surveillance unit reported a rapidly moving green light near Monte Iroite in Galicia. A bright nucleus and a trailing luminous streak crossed part of the sky within a few seconds. The military inquiry collected individual questionnaires, weather information and an operations-room statement. Its investigating officer and regional commander both proposed a natural meteor-like event.
The released file is expediente 01-MACEN-93, catalogued under Noia, historically also written Noya in the documents. Its 125 scanned pages include administrative correspondence, an initial report, repeated questionnaire material and the later inquiry. The number of pages is not the number of sightings: the central observation remains a brief event shared by five personnel approaching or waiting near the unit’s entrance.
Five observers and a few seconds of light
The unit’s lieutenant-colonel commander and his driver were approaching the entrance. Other personnel were already near the control point. The driver’s narrative places his vehicle emerging from a bend roughly three hundred metres from the entrance when he saw the light move rapidly to his right. This distance describes his position relative to the gate, not the range of the luminous phenomenon.
The official summary gives about 08:15 local time. Individual forms contain estimates around 08:18 and 08:20 as well. Most duration estimates are approximately three or four seconds, with the driver giving two or three seconds in one answer. These figures describe a very short observation without demonstrating that all five clocks or estimates were synchronised. Giving an exact common second would exceed the record.
The recurring description is a bright green nucleus with a white or yellowish-white trail, moving very rapidly along a nearly horizontal, straight apparent path. One account describes the trailing light as green as well. The summary gives an elevation of roughly twenty to thirty degrees above the horizon. These are visual descriptions and estimates, without a triangulated altitude or measured physical speed.
Several witnesses lost sight of the track behind installations or intervening terrain. One questionnaire specifically mentions a rise in the ground in front of the observer. The driver described its disappearance towards the horizon. Consequently, the file does not record a measured end point, a recovered object, a landing or a water entry. Loss of sight behind an obstruction cannot establish any of those events.
What the questionnaires preserve
The forms distinguish questions about sight, spectacles, viewing through glass, continuity, duration and speed. The commander compared the speed with that of a meteor. The driver wrote that a meteor was his own first thought, although the colour and direction left him doubtful. These reactions show that a natural explanation was considered by witnesses themselves, without implying that they all reached an identical conclusion.
The initial questionnaire includes a month entry which differs from the November date consistently used by the covering correspondence, later questionnaires, inquiry cover and weather annex. The event is catalogued as 23 November 1993. The date here follows that wider documentary agreement rather than treating an isolated inconsistent form entry as a separate sighting.
The accounts describe a luminous trace, not a detailed airframe. There is no securely resolved disc, triangular structure, occupant or separate group of lights in the material used for the assessment. A bright nucleus should not automatically become a spherical object. The article therefore retains the visual language of the source without assigning unsupported craft features.
The radar check was negative
A statement from the EVA 10 operations room says that no anomalous radar echo was detected between 07:00 and 09:00 local time on 23 November. Traffic during that interval was described as sparse and normal, with no known aerial exercise or operation. This is a documented check on an observation made near an air-surveillance unit; it is not a positive radar track matching the light.
The distinction matters because the unit’s function can give a retelling an appearance of instrument confirmation which the actual statement does not provide. The released file contains a visual report and a negative operations-room response. It supplies no radar-derived height, velocity or trajectory for the phenomenon. The personnel’s occupations should not substitute for measurements absent from the dossier.
The attached meteorological sheets identify the Noia observatory and provide timed observations for 23 November. They explicitly use Z time, unlike the local times in the visual accounts. The sheet reproduced at physical PDF page 32 gives sunrise as 07:10Z. Keeping those different time standards separate prevents a spurious contradiction between the dawn descriptions and the weather annex.
The investigating officer’s assessment
The formal inquiry cover gives 13 December 1993 as its start and 4 January 1994 as its completion. The investigating officer’s assessment dated 4 January marks the middle category, probably explainable. Its accompanying text says that the witness testimony and other information suggest a meteorite or similar phenomenon. The form does not mark the event as an established unfamiliar vehicle.
The dossier uses the Spanish term meteorito. In the context of the reported moving light, the proposal concerns a natural meteor-like atmospheric display; the file does not document a stone recovered on the ground. The terminology must not create a physical specimen which the inquiry did not produce. Nor does a proposed natural cause establish a particular parent body or a reconstructed astronomical trajectory.
The regional commander’s concluding assessment also favours a natural phenomenon. It points to the speed and straight trajectory as giving no grounds for conjecturing a vehicle of unknown origin. It notes the lack of other nearby contacts, later reactions or damage and recommends that the file be treated as unclassified information. These are the command’s stated reasons, rather than proof that every possible physical explanation was tested.
That assessment includes a suggestion connecting the green colour with the composition of a meteor. It was an interpretation of the reported colour, not a laboratory analysis or spectrum of this event. No chemical identification can be extracted from it. The commander’s natural hypothesis and his administrative recommendation also remain separate decisions: classification status concerns handling of information, not a scientific measurement.
Location, release and outcome
Approximate map area: the pin at 42.72°N, 8.92°W represents the Monte Iroite observation area. It is rounded from the Noia observatory coordinates printed in the dossier’s weather annex, physical PDF page 32. It is not a light position, a trajectory end point or an exact witness location, and gives no directions or permission to enter military land.
The later intelligence review is dated 24 October 1996, with a declassification endorsement of 29 October. Those are release-stage dates, not a second observation. The accessible record supports a Possibly Explained outcome: the investigating officer explicitly assessed it as probably explainable, and the command proposed a meteor-like natural event. No independent trajectory reconstruction or recovered material in the file turns that proposal into a definitive identification.
Source trail: Biblioteca Virtual de Defensa, expediente 01-MACEN-93, particularly physical PDF pages 2–3, 8–11, 24–39, 46–49, 62–65, 78–81, 94–97, 111–117 and 125. The lead image reproduces the command assessment under the catalogue’s CC BY 4.0 licence. Related reading: UFO / UAP / USO. Sources checked 13 November 2026.